Zhanna Vitenzon

Zhanna Ziskindovna Vitenzon was born on 26 April 1929 in Vitebsk, then in the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1930 her family moved to Moscow.

Her father, Ziskind (Alexander) Vitenzon, was a screenwriter who wrote feature films including Zanoza, Polesskaya Legenda and Sibiryaki. Her mother, Gita Sapgir, was a mathematician from a family of Vitebsk factory owners, and the poet, screenwriter and translator Genrikh Sapgir was her cousin.

She studied in the philology faculty of Moscow State University from 1947 and graduated in 1952. During student expeditions to the Russian North she collected folklore, old legends and tales, material that she later drew on for her own stories. From 1952 to 1954 she worked at the Bryansk institute for the further training of teachers.

Vitenzon became one of the most productive screenwriters in Soviet animation from the 1960s to the 1980s. Her scripts were filmed at Soyuzmultfilm, Kievnauchfilm, Belarusfilm, Uzbekfilm and the Multtelefilm unit of the Ekran studio, and she worked with directors including Roman Kachanov, Olga Khodataeva, Leonid Aristov, Stella Aristakesova, Vitold Bordzilovsky and M. Novogrudskaya.

Her early film The Fire Burns in the Yaranga (1956) won the prize for best children's film at the eighth Venice festival of films for children and young people in 1957 and a gold medal at the World Festival of Youth and Students in Moscow the same year. The Brave Little Deer received an honorary diploma at the Edinburgh film festival in 1958, and Golden Ears of Wheat followed in 1958.

The Mitten (1967), directed by Roman Kachanov, is her most famous work. The story of a lonely girl who longs for a dog, and whose mitten comes to life as a puppy, won first prize for a children's film at Annecy in 1967, a silver medal at the Moscow film festival, the Grand Prix at the Gijon festival in Spain in 1968 and first prize for animation at the All-Union film festival in Leningrad.

The Little Boat (1970) gave Soviet children the song Chunga Changa, by Vladimir Shainsky and Yuri Entin. Her other films include The Girl and the Elephant (1969), The Boy and the Cloud (1970), Play, My Pipe (1974), Oleshka the White Horns (1974), The Legend of the Old Lighthouse (1976) and Just Like That (1976). She also wrote children's books, and several of her screenplays were republished as picture books in the Soyuzmultfilm series in 2011. She appeared in the documentary series Fabrika Chudes, in the episode devoted to screenwriters, and was a member of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia.

Vitenzon came from a literary and film family: her father was a screenwriter and her cousin Genrikh Sapgir was a well known poet and writer for children. Her younger sister is Natalia Borisova, born in 1940. She kept her private life largely out of public view.

Zhanna Vitenzon died on 29 October 2026. Born in April 1929, she was 97, although several news reports gave her age as 96.

Her death was announced by the press service of the Union of Cinematographers of Russia, which said that its member, the Soviet screenwriter of animated films and children's writer, had died and that she had left a significant mark on the history of Russian animation. The Union and its Guild of Screenwriters offered condolences to her family. Someone close to her told RIA Novosti that she had suffered a long illness. Funeral arrangements were not reported.

Vitenzon's films remain staples of Russian children's television and home viewing more than half a century after they were made. The Mitten in particular is widely regarded as a classic of Soviet puppet animation, while Chunga Changa from The Little Boat is still sung by children. Her work is covered in Sergei Kapkov's Encyclopedia of Russian Animation, and in 2018 the Ikar national animation award recognised her as a Master.