Torill Kove

Biography

Torill Kove is an award-winning director, animator, illustrator and author. Born May 25, 1958, in Hamar, Norway, Kove lived in Kenya before moving to Montreal in 1982 to attend Concordia University. She went on to earn a master’s degree in Urban Planning at McGill University, then returned to Concordia to study animation, pursuing a lifelong passion for drawing and sketching. She won Kodak Awards for her student films All You Can Eat, Fallen Angel and Squash and Stretch. Kove also contributed to a number of animated productions for the National Film Board of Canada and illustrated seven picture books, three of which she authored as well. Her 1999 directorial debut for the NFB, My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts (co-produced with Studio Magica in Oslo), was nominated for an Academy Award®. Her next film for the NFB was The Danish Poet (a co-production with Norway’s Mikrofilm), featuring narration by Liv Ullmann. It won the Oscar®for Best Animated Short in 2006 as well as a Genie Award. Both films were included in the Animation Show of Shows. Kove made her feature film debut in 2013 with Hocus Pocus Alfie Atkins, based on the Alfie Atkins series by Gunilla Bergström. Her most recent NFB film, Me and My Moulton (2014, co- produced with Mikrofilm), recounts memories of growing up in a creative and unconventional family in 1960s Norway.