A Russian cartoon has won an award for best children's animated film at the international festival of animation in the city of Banja Luka in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

­The Woman’s Day Gift by Mikhail Dvoryankin has been described as a film “intertwined with simple story, motivated by a precise idea, and realized with extraordinary lyrical animation of sheer and pure art.”

The 8-minute cartoon from the Ural city of Ekaterinburg is set back in Soviet times, around the 1990s, and revolves around a timid schoolboy who has a crush on a girl in his class. Getting ready for the popular Soviet holiday – International Women's Day on 8 March – Misha creates a lovely gift for his sweetie and goes to school. Will the boy overcome his shy nature enough to hand it over?

The beautiful, hand-drawn cartoon brilliantly shows a typical Soviet school with its non-children-friendly inflexible teachers, and belittled pupils trying to find a common language with the opposite sex.   

The Woman’s Day Gift has a nostalgic feel and serves as a time machine that takes those who remember an authentic Soviet school “back to the USSR.”