The first twenty minutes of the film were screened on 20 November 2006, in Petersburg House of Cinema and received positive reactions from various news outlets.

The protagonist of the film is Ernst Hoffmann, a young lawyer, musician, and writer who inhabits two dimensions at once: the imaginary world of his fictional works and the ordinary reality of a small town.

Ernst Hoffmann becomes the titular character student Anselm who is featured in a romantic film with meetings with heroines in different times of his life: the first-in the beautiful Olympia, and the second-in the magical snake-girl Serpentine, and the third-in the posh Veronica.

[7] Mikhail Shemyakin the acclaimed theatre artist and sculptor from Saint Petersburg was acquainted with Hoffmann's fairy-tales ever since a young age.

[8][4] During the pre-perestroika times, Sokolov applied for the film concept but the idea was shelved because Hoffmann's stories were deemed too frightful for children and mystical for adults.

"[15] The most active period of creativity occurred in 2005, when Shemyakin in the suburbs of New York City, made about 20 sketches of Hoffmaniada dolls in a short time.

[8] The film was intended to feature unusual fantastic interiors such as a crystal city, Atlantis, and a story line with deep philosophical meaning.

The film makers wanted to unearth the inner emotions and thoughts the author himself would have undergone when writing the dramatic stories such as The Sandman.

According to Moscow Times report, "The Soyuzmultfilm studios are a piece of history and the embodiment of a belief that humor, art and the wacky, wily adventures of two-dimensional animals can cheer, sustain and even elevate or teach.

[14] A March 2014 report by Vechernaya Moskva remarked the Dolgorukovskaya Street Soyuzmultfilm building turned into a sort of "Hoffmann's attic", as the production of the film progressed.

[4] Director Stanislav Sokolov was optimistic about the future of Soyuzmultfilm and Russian animation industry in general, as he believed the State of Russia is starting to invest and help the studios thrive in 2015.

The final shot featured actor puppets being recorded in a miniature orchestra box designed in the style of German theatres of the 17th century.

"[9] Puppets were also derived from real-life people such as Herman Stepanov the avant-garde art school colleague of Mikhail Shemyakin and Russian poet Alexander Timofeevsky.

[9] The film managed to combine discordant characters from Hoffmann's corpus such as Tiny Tsakhes, the Nutcracker, and the Sandman into a single narrative.

[17] The film makers offered the viewer that Hoffmann was truly yearning for Atlantis through a magical love story hinging upon a trichotomy destiny.

[13] The animators also designed the miniaturized props for the film such as candlesticks placed on the tables, paintings hanging on the walls or the piano, sofas, and chairs.

[13] Cameraman Igor Skidan-Bosin, together with other technicians, invented an innovative suspended moving camera system that can drive right inside the scenery.

"[35] Yegor Belikov review from TASS, remarked the film is an accurate description of Hoffmann's "phantasmagoria without fear of getting lost in them, and their dedication inspires respect."

The film managed to describe how Hoffmann was "so closely intertwined with his fantasies, and soon, despite the apparent external dissimilarity of Ernst and Anselm, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the world of conditional reality from fictional from and to Atlantis".

The execution of the concept "is enough to make Hoffmaniada take its rightful place among the best animated works of the studio and mark the return of "Soyuzmultfilm" to the big screen.

"[16] Mir Fantastiki review also affirmed the film is light in tone, "it is amazing how Soyuzmultfilm, taking as a basis the dark stories of Hoffmann, was able to create such a bright picture.

"[68] Denis Stupnikov for Intermedia giving the film 4 stars noting the puppets exude the style of the art form of Mikhail Shemyakin.

"Hoffmaniada conveys acutely and accurately the feelings of a romantic, artist, poet, locked in everyday reality, but living not at all by it, but by a phantom life" and is an anachronism that "could only arise in the timelessness in which it was shot, when the management of the Soyuzmultfilm studio changed every few years, and the director had the highest degree of freedom from the dictates of officials and financiers.

In terms of the puppets, "outwardly, they resemble figures from Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: detailed and outrageously caricatured images, which, however, are almost devoid of computer processing, and therefore unnatural cartoonishness.

Spins wonders whether acclaimed director of the Soviet Union, Tarkovsky's famous unfinished screenplay Hoffmaniana could have been finished considering how "screenwriter Victor Slavkin so cleverly and seamlessly integrate Hoffmann into his own stories."

Spins thinks the movie is Quixotic, with "the sets, backdrops, and costumes alone make Hoffmaniada one of grandest literary period dramas of the year.

"[72] KinoKultura review by Mihaela Mihailova states the film "is auteur cinema meets bedtime story—a tad bewildering, but nevertheless an enchanting fairy-tale that should fascinate both young and mature viewers, albeit for different reasons".

[36] A Japan Cinema Today review from Kaoru Hirasawa gave the film 4 stars remarking, "It's like a dream you see with your eyes open.

[88] The city of Kaliningrad, where the legends of Hoffmann's fairy-tales were originally penned, welcomed the donations of dolls, sets, and sketches from Hoffmaniada.

Secrets of Two Worlds that opened in October 2020, within the newly renovated basement under the former Königsberg Stock Exchange is thought to be a gateway for citizens to remember their rich cultural heritage.