if you have read the original story by H. C. Andersen, you already know a little. if you have ever held a nettle in your hand, you know it better. and if you would sacrifice anything for the sake of your loved ones, you know it best.
yet still you should watch this movie. with characters brought into life, in a way that their glance and voice will go through you like a thorn. with a girl whose strength and loyalty, love and yearning might bring death to her, and of ugly, worthless, envious souls who want to harm her, take away every bit of happiness she has in her terribly difficult mission. doubt, trust, defenselessness devotion, risk and despair follow hand by hand, and you get the most passionate, soul touching story you have heard. 11 swans in the mist of the sea. magic of the nature, a miserable cell of a workshop, where the girl weaves nettle shirts... a graveyard full of demons, whom you won't recognize by day. power and distrust. and a not completely, but still relatively happy end. this is no sweet melodrama. this is bitter, and sour, and changing as the wind.