A sick mother and a Christmas that won't come. Two children and a spirit that shows up at the window to tell them happiness isn't here, it's somewhere else, and they have to go find it. What hits is that this isn't a romp, it's a search mission disguised as a fairy tale, and every step of the journey feels like it costs them something to take. The 1980 animation holds the whole thing in this quiet, melancholic space where magic doesn't feel triumphant, it feels necessary. By the end, you're not sure if the blue bird was ever real, or if the point was always that two kids had to leave home to understand why home mattered in the first place.

Tyltyl and Mytyl spend a snowy Christmas Eve lying awake at home, unable to enjoy the holiday because their mother has fallen ill. That night Berylune, an odd and changeable magical being, bursts in through the window and tells them that theirs is not the only world. Hoping to save their mother, the children set off in search of the bluebird that brings happiness, joined by assorted spirits and by their pets, who have taken human shape. Their journey leads through peculiar and marvelous places, and in the end they must confront the spirit of darkness to reach their goal. The fantasy adventure is adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's L'Oiseau Bleu.