AnimationWorld Magazine — October 5, 2017
Embracing Imperfection: Eva Cvijanović Talks ‘Hedgehog’s Home’
One of the short films that caught our eye at this year’s Ottawa International Animation Festival was Hedgehog’s Home, a needle-felted stop-motion short created for children that extolls the sanctity of hearth and home.
Winner of more than 15 international awards, including the Young Audiences Public Prize at Annecy, and an honorable mention for the Canadian Film Institute Award for Best Canadian Animation at OIAF 2017, Hedgehog’s Home was directed by Sarajevo-born, Montreal-based Eva Cvijanović. It is a co-production between Croatia’s Bonobostudio and the National Film Board of Canada, and was produced by Jelena Popović (NFB) and Vanja Andrijević (Bonobostudio), with the NFB’s Michael Fukushima serving as executive producer.
The 10-minute short, based on the classic story by Branko Ćopić, a writer from the former Yugoslavia, is a timeless and delicately choreographed tale that revives the notion of cultivating our own place of safety, dignity and comfort, no matter how big or small. Narrated by Kenneth Welsh of Twin Peaks fame, Hedgehog’s Home is the follow-up to Cvijanović’s 2013 2D animated short, Seasick, a dreamlike pen-and-ink maritime escapade that screened at TIFF earlier this year. Cvijanović was also previously a participant in the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship program for emerging Canadian filmmakers, where she completed The Kiss, in 2011.