''My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts'' is a 1999 animated short by

Torill Kove Torill Kove (born 25 May 1958) is a Norwegian-born Canadian film director and animator. She won the 2007 Academy Award for Animated Short Film for the film '' The Danish Poet'', co-produced by Norway's Mikrofilm AS and the National Film Board of ...

. Co-produced by Marcy Page of the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; french: Office national du film du Canada (ONF)) is Canada's public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary f ...

and Lars Tømmerbakke of Studio Magica in

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...

, the film humorously recounts a tall tale about the filmmaker's grandmother in

Oslo Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population ...

, Norway, during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, who actually ironed the shirts for Norway's

King Haakon VII Haakon VII (; born Prince Carl of Denmark; 3 August 187221 September 1957) was the King of Norway from November 1905 until his death in September 1957. Originally a Danish prince, he was born in Copenhagen as the son of the future Frederick VI ...

for many years. ''My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts'' was Kove's first film with the NFB. It began as a screenwriting exercise for a class at Concordia University, where Kove had been enrolled. She then pitched the film to producers at the NFB, including its eventual NFB producer, Page. As is the case with her subsequent animated shorts, the musical score for ''My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts'' was composed by Kove's husband, Kevin Dean. The film is narrated by

Mag Ruffman Margaret "Mag" Ruffman (born 28 February 1957) is a Canadian comedian, actress and television host. She has played roles in films such as '' Anne of Green Gables'' and ''Anne of Avonlea'' and TV series '' Road to Avonlea''. She was reunited wit ...

Reception

Awards for the film included a special prize from the Hiroshima International Animation Festival and a

Golden Sheaf Award Yorkton Film Festival (YFF) is an annual film festival held in late May in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada. In 1947, the Yorkton Film Council (YFC) was founded and in 1950 the first international documentary film festival officially opened in we ...

for best Animation. The film was also nominated for an

Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film is an award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) as part of the annual Academy Awards, or Oscars, since the 5th Academy Awards (with different names), covering the year 1 ...

at the

72nd Academy Awards The 72nd Academy Awards ceremony, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored films released in 1999 and took place on March 26, 2000, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST ...

. It was also included in the Animation Show of Shows.

Adaptation

In May 2017, the NFB and Canadian publisher Firefly Books announced that the film would be adapted into a children's book.

References

External links

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Watch ''My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts'' at NFB.ca
1999 films National Film Board of Canada animated short films Films directed by Torill Kove Canadian World War II films Norwegian animated short films Canadian comedy short films 1990s animated short films 1999 animated films Norwegian comedy films 1990s English-language films Norwegian World War II films 1990s Canadian films {{Norway-film-stub