Peter & The Wolf (Pedro y el lobo)
2006 · 9m · Reino Unido
Directed by Suzie Templeton
Genres: adventure, animation, family
Tones: mythic, tender, whimsical
Pedro is a lonely boy who lives on the outskirts of a forest with his protective grandfather, his only friend a duck. When a fearsome wolf threatens the duck, Pedro, together with his grandfather's cat and a little bird, decides to summon his courage and face the wolf.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects stop-motion Prokofiev to be precious and mannered, so Templeton goes the opposite way—visceral, genuinely unsettling, a kids' story that doesn't condescend or look away from the wolf's teeth. It's the rare adaptation that makes you forget the source material entirely.
A masterclass in formalist restraint: Templeton's textured animation and her precise pacing against Prokofiev's score situate this squarely in the lineage of Svankmajer and Halas & Batchelor, yet the film earns its place through disciplined visual storytelling that lets the music and image language do all the work without flinching from darkness.
The decision to render the wolf in crude, almost rough-hewn clay against the delicate detail lavished on the boy and animals creates this incredible tension that props up the entire narrative—a single formal choice that transforms a familiar fable into something that feels genuinely threatening and earned.