Trollfilm Heads to Turku - a Masterclass, a seat in the Jury and Panel Discussion

DOVRE, July 2026 – The program for this year's Turku Animated Film Festival (TAFF) is out, and we are glad to find both Anita and myself in it. From 26 to 30 August, we will be in Turku, Finland, for what promises to be a rich few days among people who care deeply about handmade animation.

There is something fitting about being invited to Turku. It is a festival with a strong feel for the craft – for the physical, made-by-hand side of our art form – which happens to be the ground Trollfilm has worked on for thirty years. Anita on the Jury

Anita has been invited to join this year's international jury, alongside Thomas Volda (UK/CRO) and Alexander Gratzer (AUT). Over three days the jury will watch the festival's competition programs and, together, arrive at their verdicts. She is glad to have been asked, and is looking forward to sitting with the films – and with two colleagues she likes and respects.

"MasterGlass" – A Masterclass on Animating on Glass

On the Friday, Anita will give a masterclass. She has, with some hesitation, allowed it the title "MasterGlass" – a small pun she couldn't quite let go of, because it says something true about the technique. For decades she has animated on layers of glass, building images in depth on the multiplane stand, letting poetic, layered films be read differently depending on where the viewer stands in life.

The talk traces her own journey with the method: from rolls of paper threaded between glass plates in her student days, to the ambitious new multiplane stand we plan to build here at Dovre. Along the way she'll speak about material – wool from the local musk ox and sheep, snow made from sugar, salt and flour – and about why the handmade matters in a world growing ever smoother with data and artificial intelligence.

"Mother Didn't Know" at the Opening

We are especially moved that Anita's short film Mother Didn't Know will be a part of the festival's opening. The film came into the world in 2020, just as everything shut down.and it has lived a little in the shadows ever since. It is a nice doorway into the masterclass, and into the feature film it was made to point toward: Christmas Survivors.

"Animated to Life" – A Conversation Across Forms

On the Friday I will take part in a panel discussion, Animated to Life: The Difference Between Story and Movement, together with Turku-based puppeteer and performance artist Ishmael Falke, moderated by Tatu Pohjavirta. It is a meeting of two ways of bringing inanimate material to life: Ishmael's three-dimensional world of puppetry and objects, and Trollfilm's layered world of cut-out multiplane animation. Two handmade, material-driven crafts, and one shared question – how do you make dead material move, and tell a story that matters, whether the subject is everyday or difficult? It feels like the right conversation for this moment, as a counterpoint to the computer-generated and the AI-based. I'm looking forward to it.

This year's TAFF Pro carries the theme Animated to Life, built around bringing objects to life and object manipulation – a program that draws stop-motion animators and puppeteers into the same room. We're glad to be part of the conversation.

A Short Trip Onward – Old Friends and partners in Tallinn

While we are in the region, Anita and I will also make a short trip across the water to Tallinn for a studio visit with Nukufilm, which was founded back in 1957. This is a reunion more than an introduction: over the years especial Nukufilm's Triin Sarapik-Kivi has worked with us on several Trollfilm productions, animating and lending her guidance to films made here at Dovre. Going back to Tallinn is a chance to see old colleagues again, and to talk about what comes next – new productions, and production technique, not least the new multiplane stand we hope to build. It will be good to compare notes with a studio that has kept the same handmade traditions alive for so long.

For now, we are counting down to Turku. Thanks to Annika, Pinja and the whole TAFF team for the invitation and for all the care that goes into making a festival happen.

See you in Turku.

Claus Gladyszak