My Dog Tulip (12A)

Voices of: Christopher Plummer, LynnRedgrave

This doggy valentine is animated with imaginative finesse by Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, who drew and painted every frame by hand.

It's based on the memoir by the renowned literary editor J R Ackerley (1896-1967) whose long relationship with his Alsatian bitch Tulip offered him something he never had from humans – "constant, single-hearted, incorruptible, uncritical devotion". Affably voiced by Christopher Plummer, Ackerley is at once enormously affectionate and beadily observant – few canine tributes have ever confronted the awkwardnesses of pavement-fouling or their behaviour in heat – while the clever graphic style marks the switch between straightforward narration and surreal doggy reverie. Truman Capote called it "one of the greatest books ever written by anybody in the world": a tall order for an adapter, one might think, but the Fierlingers wisely treat it like a walk in the park.