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National Film Board of Canada
Canada-Norway Co-production

The Danish Poet ~ Winner of the 2007 Oscar for best short subjects animation.

The technique of this film is cell animation. It was drawn in pencil on paper, then scanned and coloured digitally. All of the backgrounds were made the same way except the skies, which were oil painted by Montreal artist Anne Ashton.

A film by Torill Kove
Narrated by Liv Ullmann

Kove's first ideas for The Danish Poet began when she went through a period of self-assessment; she wanted to write a story about what she described as when "you reach a turning point or a milestone and you look back and you think 'how in the heck did I get here?'

And you realize that the answer lies somewhere in a complex web of all kinds of stuff, like genetic make-up, upbringing, coincidences, choices you made along the way, missed opportunities, [and] lucky breaks." She felt that it was a natural choice to centre on a relationship between two people, "because relationships, and especially the romantic ones, play a huge role in shaping our lives, and also, obviously, in creating new ones."

Kove originally wanted to make the film biographical, based on a story her father told her: he had dreamed of being an artist, and made an appointment with an art teacher to ask if he was good enough to make it in the art world. However, he stood at the top of the stairs and decided not to go, eventually deciding to go to architecture school (as his parents wanted) where he met his wife. Kove's inspiration was drawn from the fact that her existence seemed to hinge on that decision, because "if the artist had said, 'Oh, you must paint,' you know, then in all likelihood he would never have met my mother, and, you know, that would have been it for my chances." However, Kove felt the story was too personal, and rewrote it to be fictional.