Soviet animation · 1974
Shapoklyak · the journey home
Шапокляк
Story through the endingGena and Cheburashka travel by train for a holiday. Shapoklyak’s stolen tickets leave them off the train and forced to walk along the railway. The troublemaker becomes their fellow traveller. Their interrupted journey brings them face to face with people exploiting the countryside rather than a single mischievous neighbour.
Story & key events
Plot details and spoilers ahead.
They encounter poachers and a factory discharging dirty water into a river. Together they oppose the damage and make the factory’s management confront it. Shapoklyak’s resourcefulness is useful this time. The friends return by train; the song about the blue carriage frames travel as moving forward together despite sadness and setbacks.
Place in the world
In the first story she disrupts the building of the House of Friendship; the friends eventually send her away with balloons. In the holiday film she first steals tickets, then joins the stranded friends against poachers and pollution. At school she channels her cunning into securing repairs. These reversals matter more than a simple good-versus-evil label.
Four stop-motion films made at Soyuzmultfilm between 1969 and 1983 establish the best-known visual world. Roman Kachanov directs; Leonid Shvartsman shapes the puppets. Their stories move from finding friends to a playground, an environmental holiday adventure and school. The town is a fairy-tale social space, not a mapped real city.