The Norwegian/ Latvian animated documentary My Favorite War is ready for Annecy.

The Annecy Festival is the world's largest animated film festival, and "My Favorite War" is now nominated in the feature film Conterchamp competition at the French festival.

In its announcement of the selected feature films the festival highlights the film:

- We may find many female heroines in the scripts, but only one woman is at the helm in this selection: Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen.

My Favorite War, directed by Latvian-Norwegian Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen, is a personal, animated documentary that tells the story of the director's upbringing in  1970-1990 Latvia during the Soviet occupation. The Soviet regime used World War II as a significant ideological weapon to intimidate and oppress the population during the Cold War.

When Ilze discovers the remains of a German soldier in her backyard sandbox, she begins to find other stories buried underneath the propaganda.

Ilze B. Jacobsen's debut film, the documentary "The Class Photograph" (2001), received international attention and was shown in several countries. "My Mother's Farm" (2008) competed at the International Documentary Film Festival in Amsterdam (IDFA) in the fall of that year. The film won, among other things, the award for best documentary film in both Latvia and Norway in 2010. Jacobsen has also co-created the children's documentary series "It’s Me You See", 39 portraits of children with various disabilities who tell themselves about their lives, challenges, sorrows and joys. Together with her husband Trond Jacobsen and Marianne Müller, she runs the company Bivrost Film. In 2018, Bivrost Film won an Emmy Award for the animated children's series "My Body belongs to Me” together with the broadcaster NRK Super.

 - Being nominated at Annecy is a dream come true. It is sad that we cannot be present at this "animators’ mecca" and meet the audience. But no one can take this accomplishment away from us even if the festival is only digital, and not physical, this year due to the pandemic. We share this achievement with many good colleagues like the main designer Svein Nyhus and our fantastic team of animators in Riga. 

Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen, director.

- We are looking forward to getting "My Favorite War" out to cinema and TV later this year. This is a very relevant story in these times about being young and rebelling against a totalitarian regime during the Cold War. The current pandemic in the world reminds us that this is an increasingly important topic for young and old generations alike, in a world where we soon have more dictatorships and authoritarian regimes than democracies. 

Trond Jacobsen, producer.

My Favorite War is funded by, among others, the Norwegian Film Institute, the Latvian Film Institute and the Viken Film Center.

- It's great to get a film into the Annecy festival, which is the most important festival for animated films. It's not that often that Norwegian feature films get nominated. Most recent was Mats Grorud's "The Tower", which participated outside the competition in 2018. 

Toril Simonsen (Project Manager International Relations Documentary), the Norwegian Film Institute.