The goal of this cross-cultural study is to analyse the dialogue of the Russian and Italian cultural patrimony reflected in the collaboration of Tonino Guerra, poet, writer and scriptwriter, and Andrey Khrzhanovsky, film director, writer and painter. Through the analysis of their common films, first of all, of the Lev s sedoj borodoj [Lion with a grey beard] (1995), we can follow the way of the transformation of the Tonino Guerra’s fairy tale first into the children book which they conceived together with a designer Michail Romadin, and then in the animation movie directed by Andrej Khrzhanovsky. The quotations from the Russian and Italian cinema, music, opera and songs as well as the drawings and sketches made by a painter and set designer Sergej Barchin are extremely important for the diegesis of this intertextual masterpiece. The same artistical principle is reproduced in the second Guerra and Khrzhanovsky common film, Dolgoe puteshestvie [A long travel] (1997). The memoir Ciao, Tonino, edited by Andrej Khrzhanovsky, along with other published and unpublished accounts from friends and collaborators, sheds light on the creative process behind international art that blends various national traditions.