Blood Tea And Red String

To say that Christiane Cegavske's grim, stop-motion animated fairy tale revolves around two families of furry creatures vying for possession of a life-size doll with an egg stitched into its belly doesn't begin to evoke the film's wondrous strangeness.

It opens with a trio of white mice, elegantly clad in starched ruffs and crimson frock coats that match their eyes, commissioning a doll from four odd creatures — imagine wingless bats with bird beaks — whose cottage is built into the trunk of a magnificent tree and guarded by benevolent sunflowers. The oak creatures make the doll, which has the inky hair and pale face of a Japanese kabuki doll, but when the m...