Kirikou is born in an African village under a terrible spell that has been placed on it by the sorceress Karaba. Kirikou decides to save the village and begins his adventure by setting out to find the Wise Man in the Forbidden Mountain.
The film is a sub-story to ''Kirikou and the Sorceress'' rather than a straight sequel. The movie is set while Kirikou is still a child and Karaba is still a sorceress. Like ''Princes et Princesses'' and ''Les Contes de la nuit'', it is an anthology film comprising several episodic stories, each of them describing Kirikou's interactions with a different animals. It is however unique among Michel Ocelot's films, not only in that it is co-directed by Bénédicte Galup (who has previously worked with him as an animator) but also for each of the stories being written by a different person (in all other cases, Ocelot has been the sole writer and director of his films).