NFB Animator Torill Kove Receives Spark Animation Lifetime Achievement Award

Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove was honored in Vancouver by Spark Animation, Western Canada’s largest celebration of animation, presented by the Spark Computer Graphics Society. Kove received the festival’s Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her outstanding contributions to the field of animation, as well as this year’s Canadian Film Prize for her new short film, Maybe Elephants, co-produced by Mikrofilm and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

Kove is a Norwegian-born filmmaker and animator living in Canada. Three of her films (including My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts and Me and My Moulton) have been nominated for Academy Awards; The Danish Poet, narrated by Liv Ullmann, won the Oscar in 2007.

Maybe Elephants has won four festival awards and mentions to date, including the Short Film – Audience Prize at South Korea’s Bucheon International Animation Festival and Best Nordic-Baltic Animated Youth Film at Norway’s Fredrikstad Animation Festival. The film has qualified for Academy Awards consideration by exhibition.

“I’m honored and deeply touched to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Spark Animation festival,” said Kove. “This is an occasion for me to reflect on how fortunate I’ve been to have a career as an animation director with the National Film Board of Canada and the Norwegian animation studio Mikrofilm. I owe these two animation studios and everybody who has collaborated with me on my films a great debt of gratitude. I interpret this award both as an acknowledgement of my work so far and as encouragement to keep making more films.”

An autobiographical story about a family whose lives are changed forever by their experiences living in 1970s Nairobi, Maybe Elephants is the fourth collaboration of the NFB and Norway’s Mikrofilm with the Montreal-based Kove — a recurring partnership encompassing three Academy Award-nominated shorts, including her 2007 Oscar winner, The Danish Poet.

Maybe Elephants continues its festival tour this month at the London International Animation Festival, taking place online and in cinemas from November 22 to December 1. The film has been selected by more than 20 festivals so far, including the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, L.A.’s Animation Is Film and AFI FEST, and the Toronto International Film Festival and Ottawa International Animation Festival.

The short is produced by Lise Fearnley and Tonje Skar Reiersen for Mikrofilm and NFB’s Maral Mohammadian.