A 26-year-old German woman made the world's oldest surviving animated film, a decade before Disney
Released 11 years before Disney's Snow White, Reiniger's silhouette animation masterpiece is widely recognised by film historians as the earliest surviving animated feature.
German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger created the world's oldest surviving animated feature film more than a decade before Walt Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, challenging a long-held belief about the origins of feature-length animation.
According to a BBC report marking the centenary of The Adventures of Prince Achmed, Reiniger completed the groundbreaking stop-motion film in 1926 at the age of 26, making her one of the most influential yet often overlooked figures in cinema history.
Released 11 years before Disney's Snow White, Reiniger's silhouette animation masterpiece is widely recognised by film historians as the earliest surviving animated feature.
"You can't think of an equivalent to Lotte Reiniger," Jez Stewart, curator of animation at the British Film Institute (BFI), told the BBC. "This young female artist had the vision and skills to create a timeless classic that still speaks to audiences across the world. Even 100 years on, we're still thinking, 'How did she do that?'"
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Born in Berlin in 1899, Reiniger developed an early fascination with theatre and storytelling through shadow puppetry, creating silhouette characters to stage miniature performances of Shakespeare plays.
Her introduction to filmmaking came during the production of a silent adaptation of The Pied Piper of Hamelin, where she initially worked on hand-cut title cards. The project also introduced her to stop-motion techniques after filmmakers used wooden rats animated frame by frame when live animals proved uncooperative.
"This was my first encounter with animation," Reiniger later wrote in her 1970 book Shadow Puppets, Shadow Theatres and Shadow Films.
Inspired by the technique, she began experimenting with articulated silhouette figures placed on illuminated glass plates and photographed from above. By 1919, she had completed her first animated short, The Ornament of the Loving Heart.
Over the following years, Reiniger produced several short films, many inspired by fairy tales, including Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella.
"She was always interested in fairy tales," Stewart said. "She even made an advert for Nivea cream."
Her distinctive style attracted the support of a Berlin banker in 1923, enabling her to begin work on a full-length animated feature — an unprecedented undertaking at the time.
"The opportunity to make a feature-length animated film at that time was an anomaly," Stewart explained. "But that anomaly was connected to the way Reiniger made films. It was an affordable, artisanal method using limited means."
Reiniger wrote, directed and designed The Adventures of Prince Achmed, crafting intricate silhouette puppets from cardboard and lead with movable joints. The film combined elements from several Middle Eastern folk tales and followed Prince Achmed's adventures against a shape-shifting sorcerer.
The production, which took three years to complete, is also credited with pioneering an early version of the multiplane camera — a technique later associated with Disney.
"She introduced an early version of the multiplane camera," Cristina Formenti, president of the Society for Animation Studies, told the BBC. "She used it to create a sense of depth. If you watch the film, you can see that it's not just a flat image."
Reiniger created the effect by positioning multiple layers of glass beneath a camera mounted above, allowing foreground characters and background elements to move independently.
Although Disney later received a US patent for a more sophisticated multiplane camera system in 1940, historians argue Reiniger was the first known filmmaker to use the technique.
"Obviously, Disney's version was more complex," Formenti said. "But Reiniger is the first one that's known to have used it."
While Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is often described as the first animated feature film, historians note that Disney's extensive marketing contributed to that perception.
"Disney was a genius in many ways," Stewart said. "Self-marketing and promotion were definitely one of them."
Some film historians point to Argentine filmmaker Quirino Cristiani's 1917 production El Apóstol as a possible predecessor. However, no copies of the film survive, leaving The Adventures of Prince Achmed as the earliest animated feature still available for audiences today.
Stewart said the film's enduring legacy remains unmatched.
"She was a young female artist making an unprecedented feature film in animation – and it's still in circulation 100 years later. It's just extraordinary."
