Torill Kove
Directing
Biography
Torill Kove (born 25 May 1958; Hamar) is an award-winning Norwegian-Canadian filmmaker and animator. Born in Hamar, Norway, she has lived in Montreal since 1982. Three of her films have been nominated for Academy Awards®, with The Danish Poet, narrated by Liv Ullmann, winning the coveted golden statue in 2007. Kove’s films are known for her expressive designs and playful and poignant autobiographical themes. Her work frequently deals with the challenges of family and parenting, while lightly exploring questions around memory, history and birth. Kove made her directorial debut in 1999 with My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts (co-produced by the NFB and Studio Magica). Loosely inspired by the life of her grandmother, the film was nominated for an Academy Award®. Following The Danish Poet, a love story and lightly philosophical take on the random nature of existence, Kove returned with Me and My Moulton (2014), about a middle child’s search for normalcy in the face of her loving but eccentric parents. The film won Best Animated Short at the 2015 Canadian Screen Awards and was also nominated for an Academy Award®. Threads (2017) tackles the complexities of parenting and maintaining connections in a fragmented world. With her most recent film, Maybe Elephants (2024), Kove finally faces her fear of tusk-bearing mammals. Her last four films were all co-produced by Norwegian studio Mikrofilm and the NFB. In 2013, Kove directed the animated feature Hocus Pokus Alfie Atkins. She has also illustrated several children’s books. In 2015, Kove received Norway’s prestigious Anders Jahre Prize for the Arts
Known For
Three rebellious teenage daughters, a restless mother, a father struggling with potatoes, and maybe some elephants, find themselves in Nairobi. What could possibly go wrong?
Maybe Elephants
Seven year old Albert has an imaginary best friend, and thinks he is old enough to get a dog. Dad doesn't agree. Will getting to know a magician help convince dad?
Hocus Pocus, Alfie Atkins!
A seven-year-old girl longs for a bicycle so that she can be more like the other kids in her Norwegian town, but her embarrassingly unconventional, modernist architect parents see things differently. Academy Award-winning animator Torill Kove weaves memory and fantasy together in this droll and charming look at the pain of childhood alienation.
Me and My Moulton
A woman ponders over the strange coincidences that made her forefathers and -mothers meet and create the premises for her becoming the person that she is.
The Danish Poet
Inspired by "Me and My Moulton"
5 Sure Signs Your Parents Were Architects
A personal interpretation of Norwegian history - starring a grandmother who during the Second World War loses her job ironing the King's shirts. Instead she gains access to the enemy's uniforms, and inspires her own brand of resistance fighters, the "Shirt Guerillas".
My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts
In this spellbinding hand-drawn odyssey by the celebrated Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove, a bustling urban habitat becomes an enchanting web of human connection. Threads explores how fundamental attachment is to the experience of being human.