Montreal – National Film Board of Canada
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)
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/maybe-elephants
- In the ’70s, three rebellious teenage daughters, a restless mother, a father struggling with potatoes, and maybe some elephants, find themselves in bustling Nairobi—and the family will never be the same.
- Narrated by Torill Kove, the film wraps rich nostalgia around memories of eventful family trips, timeless teen antics and those inevitable moments of adolescent epiphany—bursting with wit, a joyful colour palette and an energetic soundscape.
- Maybe Elephants was made with the collaboration of several Kenyan Canadians who played the roles of Kenyan characters and with whom Kove consulted on Swahili language and Kenyan culture.
- Torill 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, 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.