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Stop everything. Michel Ocelot’s Tales of the Night is on Netflix instant play! Keep in mind, its not your Disney-esque type of stories. 

On a dark French night, a boy, a girl, and an avuncular man tell each other stories, looking through books and pulling up images from various cultures around the world. They discuss what kind of stories they want to act out. They want adventure, princes and princesses, love, death, and noble lessons learned, sometimes in straightforward ways, other times through twisty irony. Other times, the storytellers are motivated by a location, a hairstyle or a costume that catches their attention. Maybe they want an animal companion or a certain kind of music. They imagine themselves across cultures, across races, in very different characters and stories, smoothly walking miles in shoes unlike their own.

They’re in complete control of the worlds they create. And what beautiful worlds they are. Ocelot animates it all through simple silhouette figures, the puppet-like people playing out their actions before vivid colors and kaleidoscopic backdrops that form lush jungles, shiny gold cities, dank dungeons and dark woods. The seemingly simple style of animation is deceptively intricate, effortlessly creating whole universes out of big, bold uses of color and geometrical shapes carefully arranged within the frame. It’s a style of animation that’s been around since the earliest days of cinema.