A stepmother sends an orphaned girl into a frozen forest on New Year's Eve to find flowers that don't exist, because a spoiled princess demands them. The cold doesn't care about fairness. Neither does magic when it finally arrives to answer cruelty with consequence. This is a Soviet fairy tale that understands the real cost of greed, not as a lesson but as something you watch happen in real time.
Anya is an orphaned, kind-hearted girl. When a spoiled princess sees a picture of a Galanthus, she wants the flower at once, even though it only blooms in April and it is New Year's Eve in the depths of winter. The princess promises a basket of gold to whoever brings her a bag of the blossoms. Anya's greedy stepmother and selfish stepsister send her into the snowy woods to search for them. There the spirits of the Twelve Months step in to help, shifting the seasons around her so she can finish her task. When she comes back with the flowers, everyone wants to know how the miracle happened, but she has promised to keep it secret. The film is a 1980 fantasy adapted from a story by the Soviet poet Samuel Marshack.
