Oscar winner Torill Kove's new Mikrofilm/National Film Board of Canada animated short Maybe Elephants makes its much-anticipated US debut this month at three southern California film fests: the Newport Beach Film Festival (Oct. 17-24), Animation Is Film (Oct. 18-20) and AFI FEST in Los Angeles (Oct. 23-27).
Maybe Elephants marks the fourth collaboration of the NFB and Norway's Mikrofilm AS with Montreal-based animator Torill Kove-a stellar run of animation excellence over two decades, encompassing three Academy Award-nominated shorts, including her 2007 Oscar winner, The Danish Poet.
A playful and loving autobiographical homage to family, adolescence and the therapeutic power of memories, however unreliable, Maybe Elephants reunites the cast of Kove's previous Oscar nominee, Me and My Moulton.
"I see this film as a sequel to my 2015 short Me and My Moulton, which was a semi-biographical snapshot of my family in the 1960s, when my sisters and I were under 10 years old and my parents were young and hip. In Maybe Elephants, I'm revisiting the same family. I think everybody has at least one important story. It can be catastrophic, like a war, or romantic. Maybe Elephants is my story, and it goes like this: we were a happy family and then our parents left us," says Torill Kove.
Maybe Elephants arrives in the US after a world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France and its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival, which was followed by an Official Selection in the Narrative Short Film Competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
The Spark Animation festival in Vancouver, British Columbia (Oct. 31-Nov. 3), is presenting its Lifetime Achievement Award to Torill Kove in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of animation, and honouring Maybe Elephants with its Canadian Film Prize.
Maybe Elephants by Torill Kove (Mikrofilm/NFB, 16 min 43 s)
Producers: Lise Fearnley (Mikrofilm), Maral Mohammadian (NFB), Tonje Skar Reiersen (Mikrofilm)
