Animation Magazine — June 12, 2024
Exploring the Gap Between Reality and Memory: Torill Kove’s ‘Maybe Elephants’ (Extended Interview)
***This article was written for the June/July ’24 issue of Animation Magazine (No. 341)***
“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy famously wrote — a theme Torill Kove’s latest animated short film, Maybe Elephants, playfully explores. Kove, a world-renowned animator with three Oscar nominations and a win for The Danish Poet in 2007, revisits familial dynamics, delving into the gap between reality and memory in this sequel to her 2015 semi-autobiographical short, Me and My Moulton.
Selected to compete at the 2024 Annecy Festival, Maybe Elephants is set against the lively backdrop of 1970s Nairobi. The film examines the nuanced lives of a family adapting to significant changes after relocating to Kenya. The narrative, inspired by Kove’s own experiences, focuses on three teenage daughters grappling with adolescence in a new culture.
“I think everybody has at least one important story,” she says. “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.” (Read full story…)