Anita Killi and Trollfilm Honored with Full Retrospective at DOK Leipzig
DOVRE, September 2026. Trollfilm and director Anita Killi have been invited to a career retrospective — DOK Leipzig's Animated Film Hommage — at the festival's 69th edition, running October 26 to November 1, 2026 in Leipzig, Germany.
The tribute takes the shape of two film programs and a masterclass: one built from Anita's own films, the other gathering titles Trollfilm has been part of more broadly. Together they bring 13 films to Leipzig, spanning three decades of hand-crafted, multiplane cut-out animation out of the studio at Killi Megarden in Dovre — work the festival describes as taking on domestic violence, intergenerational trauma, and war. Which is, frankly, a lot to ask of an art form built on paper, glass, and light — and exactly what she's spent thirty years quietly getting right.
It isn't the studio's first time in Leipzig, and it isn't the first time the festival has recognized this work. Mum's Hair (2017, directed by Maja Arnekleiv) already won DOK Leipzig's Golden Dove for Best International Animated Documentary. And in 2022, I'm Not Afraid! (directed by Marita Mayer, with Anita as co-producer) screened in the festival's Kids DOK section — that same film returns as part of this year's retrospective. A return, then, not an introduction. Though if you ask Anita, she'll tell you it's really about the films, not about her — which is, of course, exactly the kind of thing she would say.
Three Decades on Screen
The lineup spans three decades, and every one of the 13 titles has its director on record. Anita directed The Glass Ball(1992, with Hege Krogvig Bergstrand), Daughter of the Sun (1996), The Hedge of Thorns (2001), Angry Man (2009), and Mother Didn't Know (2020) — and worked alongside others on Circle (1994, with Laila Rakvåg), Far, Far Away (1997, with Natasha Nikitina), and The King Who Wanted More Than a Crown (1999, with Randall Meyers). The newer titles bring in a wider circle of filmmakers Trollfilm has produced or collaborated with: the Golden Dove-winning Mum's Hair(2017, directed by Maja Arnekleiv), Quiet (2018, Marianne Bundgaard Nielsen), I'm Not Afraid! (2022, Marita Mayer), Is Heaven Blue? #2 (2023, Menno and Paul de Nooijer), and this year's newest addition, Black Box (2025, Anton Dyakov).
A Race Against the Reel
Three of the films — Circle, Far, Far Away, and The King Who Wanted More Than a Crown — will screen the way they were made: on physical 35mm prints. None of the three has ever been digitized, and the National Library of Norway confirmed there simply isn't capacity to scan them before the festival. Two of the prints are on loan from the National Library, with a caveat that says a lot about where analogue film stands today: new 35mm prints have become extremely difficult to produce, so a damaged copy cannot simply be replaced. The third print, an English-language copy of The King Who Wanted More Than a Crown, comes from the Norwegian Film Institute.
A Masterclass on Three Decades of Craft
On October 29 at 11:30, Anita speaks at the Zeitgeschichtliches Forum Leipzig, in a free public masterclass moderated by curator Marie Ketzscher. She'll chart the studio's evolution from its beginnings to today — a rare public look at a working method she's spent three decades refining, mostly for herself: glass plates, cameras, paper objects, and, more recently, the creative process behind Trollfilm's first feature film, currently being animated in Dovre.
We're looking forward to sharing all of this with audiences in Leipzig this autumn — three decades of hand-built stories, back on screen where they belong.
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