This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

.Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

maybe, it is more than a masterpiece. for refined construction of levels of story. for the hard work of a great team. for message. and for memories. for the end. and for the deep poetry of story. a story of love. not ordinary. full of dramatic situations. and convincing. like a parable. or, just like a trip across memories. a film remembering , for me, the Petre Ispirescu fairy tale "Youth everlasting and life without end ". sure, not same end. but the same essence.

***THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS*** Though the film is technically brilliant, particularly considering it was made entirely with free software, the ending simply did not work for me, emotionally. The ending is so senselessly, needlessly tragic, that it reduces the main character's entire life to a complete waste of time. More, the final few moments reveals this literally has been her entire life. She sees her reflection, and realizes she is no longer the teenage street-kid who went out on the quest. She is visibly aged with gray hair, scarred, gaunt and utterly beaten. This is exactly why the tragedy happens. The story doesn't cover a few months. She spent her entire life on this quest. And, because she spent her entire life on this quest, because she was a true hero and didn't quit, she failed. To me, they were aiming for pathos, missed, and just ended up with pathetic.This is not to say that you can't write a story where the hero fails or dies. Many good stories have been written with downer endings. Romeo and Juliet has a totally downer ending - both the hero and the heroine die. But, there was a REASON they died. The original moral of the story is that vendettas are stupid, hateful and wrong, and lead only to tragedy. Their deaths serve that purpose. More, the story was one that was very well known in Shakespeare's day before anyone even went to the theater, and before the show begins, the chorus basically warns us these are "star-crossed lovers" - I.E. it's going to end badly for them, the fates are against them. Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" also has a downer ending. But there's a reason for it, too. The entire point of the novel is to show that a society that focuses only on self-gratification and relies on the government to insure their happiness can only lead to the destruction of the individual and mindless subservience to the state. Hemmingway's "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber" is another one that ends tragically. But, there's a reason for that, too. When Francis dies, we are left with the question of whether it was murder or accident, and the overall story forms a statement on a particular economic caste of American culture as it existed at that time, quietly asking important questions about what it is to be a man.In short, death and failure does not mean the story sucks if that death and failure serves the overall moral, theme or general point of the story.However, with "Sintel", the only moral we can gain out of this story is "Don't be loyal, don't try to rescue friends, and don't try to succeed. You'll only spend your entire life trying, get right to the end, then fail spectacularly and have wasted your entire life."

Sintel is an impressive animated film for being built on an open source engine with a crew of less than 100 people. You won't find the same graphical detail seen in mainstream animated movies but you will experience emotion for these characters. Emotion for characters is a hard thing to achieve when dealing in animation. It takes perfect execution of story and animated facial expressions, something which I give the team at Blender Foundation a standing ovation. The story on the other hand seems to be condensed, leaving some questions unanswered.The following section below is a spoiler and is meant for people who have seen the film.**Spoiler Warning** As I said above, the story left some questions unanswered which could of been solved with character development in additional scenes. In the beginning, Sentil is attacked by some random guy. Who is this antagonist and why is he motivated to kill her? Perhaps he was a dragon hunter who wounded Scales in the beginning and spends the rest of the story trying to reclaim the baby dragon as a prize? Or how about Sentil's background, why is she alone and rely on the emotional support of a dragon? These questions could be answered through some story expansion. Other than that, the movie's 15 minute runtime is worth sitting through, although I hope you like bittersweet endings.

I have to admit this short animation is really great, i do enjoy from the first second till last, everything is perfect, great plot & great music ( well there is of course imperfection with some movement of character if you compare it to a high budge 3d animation movie, but i will still call this perfect ) especially the last song of their soundtrack "I move on", i would like to see the movie version of this because 15 minutes is to short i want to see some more!!! Moving on, bravery and friendship is the main morality message in the movie, they try to give you a lesson with an usual way to help you to let go your past, i found this movie is very motivating also,if you need quick boosting to be inspired or when you feel down then this could be a great remedies. Also this short movie is great for every age, children to adult i guarantee you will enjoy it.