 Norstein says that Viktor Tinyaev (Виктор Тиняев) helped him during this period.In 1986, with only 10 minutes of the film completed, Norstein was fired from the Soyuzmultfilm studio in which he had worked.This was despite the fact that his films had gathered many international awards, and "Tale of Tales" had been voted the best animated film of all time by a large panel of international critics in 1984.