La jeune fille sans mains (Sébastien Laudenbach) French animated film adapting the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale about a miller who inadvertently sells his daughter to the Devil in exchange for limitless riches. Like a lot of the Grimm fairy tales, the actual narrative elements of the film are horrific-- the Devil wants his young prize "dirty," so the father, keeping his promise to the Devil, traps her up a tree guarded by vicious dogs until she's soiled herself. However, since she's wiped away the tears from her eyes, her hands are too pure to be carried off to Hell, so the Devil makes the father chop her hands off... All of this is depicted in the film's wonderful elliptical art style, with every image looking like an unfinished sketch:
I gather from reading comments elsewhere online that this style is maddening for some, but for me it's obviously the film's raison d'être. This film was apparently singlehandedly illustrated by Laudenbach, and it bears a distinct charm by virtue of its style. At 75 minutes, it's about as long as this kind of experiment can sustain, and the narrative, while dark and grotesque (no need to dub this into English for kids, they'd probably be either bored or terrified if they got far enough into this), does not ask much more of us than to sit back and watch it unfold prettily. Shout quite unexpectedly put this out on Blu-ray, and it's def worth picking up, especially since they threw in a handful of shorts by the director as well.
