The Snow Queen is a hand-drawn animated film directed by Lev Atamanov, based on the 1844 story by Hans Christian Andersen. When the titular Snow Queen abducts Kai and turns his kind, sympathetic heart into a piece of ice, his friend Gerda sets off to save him. The film quickly became a classic. At the height of the Cold War, Universal Pictures acquired the film for US theatrical distribution, a massive stepping stone considering the tension between the two countries.