''Cow on the Moon'' () is a 1959

Yugoslavia , common_name = Yugoslavia , life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation , p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia , flag_p ...

short film A short film is a film with a low running time. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of not more than 40 minutes including all credits". Other film o ...

made by Croatian

animation studio An animation studio is a company producing animation, animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales ...

Zagreb Film Zagreb Film is a Croatian film company principally known for its animation studio. From Zagreb, it was founded in 1953. They have produced hundreds of animated films, as well as documentaries, television commercials, educational films and several ...

. It follows a young girl as she tricks and scares a bully for breaking a small model of a spaceship she made.

Plot

The film begins with a boy playing with a

ball A ball is a round object (usually spherical, but sometimes ovoid) with several uses. It is used in ball games, where the play of the game follows the state of the ball as it is hit, kicked or thrown by players. Balls can also be used for s ...

down the street until he trips on a hole in the ground. Once a small girl constructing a small wooden spaceship toy laughs at the boy, he goes over to the girl and begins teasing her, eventually breaking the toy and walking away. She gets upset and gets an idea on how to get revenge on him. She obtains wooden materials and goes up the hill to construct a decoy

space shuttle The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. ...

. The boy notices it and goes over to the top of the hill. As she is about to "launch" it, the boy gets her to let him test the rocket instead. After he was seated inside the rocket, the little girl began dragging it down the hill and to the nearest

stone quarry A quarry is a type of open-pit mine in which dimension stone, rock, construction aggregate, riprap, sand, gravel, or slate is excavated from the ground. The operation of quarries is regulated in some jurisdictions to manage their safety ...

, with the boy believing that he was flying towards the

Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...

. Once she finishes dragging the rocket down, she goes away, hides, and makes an alien costume while a

cow Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, bovid ungulates widely kept as livestock. They are prominent modern members of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus '' Bos''. Mature female cattle are called co ...

goes towards the rocket. The boy hears the sounds that the cow made and quickly gets terrified, believing that an alien has noticed him. The cow sees the girl wearing the alien costume and, out of fear, runs away and climbs a tree. The boy exits the rocket and looks around to check if the creature is still nearby, and then notices the girl. Terrified, he does the same as the cow and starts screaming while the girl tries to reach him. He drops down from the tree and rides the cow as the girl continues to scare him until they come back to where the film started. The boy, shocked, watches as the girl reveals that the alien was her and he never actually went to the Moon, causing the cow to laugh uncontrollably.

Reception

The film won multiple awards, such as the first prize at the

San Francisco International Film Festival The San Francisco International Film Festival (abbreviated as SFIFF), organized by SFFILM, is held each spring for two weeks, presenting around 200 films from over 50 countries. The festival highlights current trends in international film and vid ...

and the 3rd prize for directing at the 1960 Yugoslav film festival in

Pula Pula, also known as Pola, is the largest city in Istria County, west Croatia, and the List of cities and towns in Croatia, seventh-largest city in the country, situated at the southern tip of the Istria, Istrian peninsula in western Croatia, wi ...

Legacy

The short film was adapted into a picture book in 1969. In 2022, the film was remastered in HD and uploaded to

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

under Zagreb Film's official YouTube channel.

References

External links

* {{IMDb title, id=0175826, title=Krava na mjesecu
''Krava na mjesecu'' on YouTube
1959 films 1959 animated short films Yugoslav animated short films Films directed by Dušan Vukotić Zagreb Film films Croatian animated short films 1959 independent films Animated films without speech Animated films about children