Well I guess the story lacks a flow and the movie is way too short to create what is needed for the ending which is meant to be very emotional. This way it at least for me didn't create enough emotions to really feel sorry for what happens in the end. It jumps around too much and in general leads to strange moments. Like for example during the chicken chase she throws down a box of apples. Strangely nobody seems to care - so why was this girl nearly starving at all? Then the dragon drops the chicken in order to go chase some birds afterwards. For another strange reason the girl didn't take the chicken with her despite chasing it before obviously in order to eat it so why wouldn't she just pick it up (and she doesn't really have any "pockets" where she could have put it)...

The entire movie pretty much delivers such strange scenes which seem to have flaws already at the storyboard stage just as rather pointless stuff like that "Secret of Mana" tree. Despite that its roots look a bit strange I guess it's just there to show the result of the use of a new feature whatever that may be. So I also guess using a movie to push Blender and its features forward is a bad idea as a movie is about the movie itself and not the cool features you now have to create whatever you show...

Sintel also seems to have quite some issues with the HD render result. I didn't watch that quality for myself but I read that the renderer seems to create some sort of artifacts which ruin the HD resolution advantage a bit...