In this paper, I analyse Aleksandr Petrov’s animated film Son smeshnogo chelovekafrom 1992. The paper’s point of departure is Yuri Lotman’s observation that language of animation is fundamentally different from the language of the feature cinema and the documentary. Its main property is that it operates with “a sign of a sign” and “an image of an image”. Its typical features are also various kinds of disrupted spatial and temporal connections, as well as jumps and leaps between cinematic sequences, something that, I will argue, resembles the structure of a dream. The paper focuses on how some central elements of Dostoevsky’s “fantastic story” and dream narrative are interpreted cinematically, in order to pinpoint whether the animated film with its specific characteristics is particularly suitable for adapting such literary texts as Dostoevsky’s.