An exclusive interview with Margrethe Danielsen

Seattle-Bergen Sister City Association President Lori Ann Reinhall interviews director Margrethe Danielsen for the U.S. premiere of Bear Hug at the Seattle Sister Cities Short Film Festival, May, 4, 2025.

Lori Ann Reinhall: Margrethe, what inspired you to make Bear Hug?

Margrethe Danielsen: The film started with an inner image that I saw of a tall bear wearing a party hat as a beak, hanging out with some small birds. I was entertained by this strange character and tried to find many scenarios that could be difficult for a fake bird, and eventually a story started to take form. 

LAR: Did you have any personal connection to the theme(s) in the film?

MD: Yes, I do, but I find it easier to talk about difficult topics through symbols and images, so I let the viewer search for the answers to this question in the film. However, one thing I did notice in the film a long time after the film was made, was the sparse selection of social opportunities in the forest where the little bear lives. Having grown up in a small town where the social selection was limited and a bit rough, I think this has manifested in the work, for example. 

LAR: You dedicated the film to your brother. Was this just out of love, or were you trying to convey something special to him?

MD: I think it is both out of love to him, and I also wanted to convey something special to him by thanking him. He was very supportive in the period while I was waiting for funding. He really wanted me to make the film, as I think he could see how much it meant to me, and he came with many creative suggestions on how to get funding for the film. 

LAR: Did you have a particular audience/age group in mind when making the film?

MD: I did, I thought it would be a film for people between 0 and 157 years old; a universal audience. I based this choice on fairytales I loved as a child, made by H.C. Andersen, who I think are made both for kids and adult. The fairy tales often deal with deeply sad and grotesque topics and dares to stay in those emotions without solving problems in a positive way. I thought it must be OK to make films that end on a sad note and show them to both children and grownups, also in our time, as it is still an imperfect world.

LAR: Why bears? What do they symbolize for you?

MD: I played with teddy bears as a child. Maybe I mirrored my emotions into those bears and found them to be good symbols of people? I do think that bears are quite noble creatures, wild but gentle, I think they remind me more of people than for example dinosaurs or dogs. 

LAR: Tell me a little about the puppets and techniques used in creating the animation.

MD: The puppets are based on my designs. I was inspired by  Eastern-European puppet-making style where the puppets emotions can be found in the sculpt of the puppet. The puppets were partly made over skype during COVID in the French studio JPL-Films (JPL-Films were the main producers, with Norwegian Mikrofilm as co-producers). 

I was able to join the production physically in France after a few months, thus the ground-work the puppet makers did based on drawings and video conversations. The puppets have ball-and-socket armatures, a foam latex core, thick cotton canvas for fur that has been combed with a steel brush and fixed with silicon to avoid "boiling" the fur. The sets are mainly created in front of camera, made by wood, faux fur, lots of glue and plexiglass. We combined some analogue and digital effects to give life to the environment, for example in the water, and we aimed for a late summer forest light. 

There were four to five animation stations set up at the same time, and animators were working shifts and on several places in the film simultaneously, so the production went by pretty fast.

LAR: Bear Hug was a cross-border collaboration, and the film has a strong universal appeal. Did it change the film in any way?

MD: Thank you. I am not sure how the film would look if I created it somewhere else. I brought reference pictures from Norwegian forests, and the forest is made by French set builders, so maybe that meeting made a universal forest.

LAR: How has the film been received so far?

MD: I think that people feel that it is quite sad, but I have not talked to many festival audiences. I have however traveled to schools around in Norway and showed it to very many children, around the age of 10 years old. They sometimes ask me, "Why did you make such a bad film?" and then they say that what they mean is that it ends badly and that they are waiting for something positive to happen to the little bear. I think I agree on this, but the film is how it is. 

LAR: Finally, tell me more about yourself, your education, why you decided to become a filmmaker. What are your plans for the future?

MD: I studied to become a pre-school teacher, where I focused on stop-motion animation for kids, then I studied animation, and later I took a master in media practices, I have worked in several Stop-Motion animation studios in Europe, and I teach Stop-Motion animation to students and kids, so I guess I have turned into a Stop-Motion animation nerd. I find this technique to be quite exciting it is both creative and physical, fast and meditative, and it is nice to do different tasks within the genre: building puppets, writing stories, animate; it is all so varied.  

I don’t remember deciding to become a filmmaker, but I remember hearing about the possibility of studying animation, where one could visualize imagined stories, and I got a good feeling about this. As a child, I loved making living spaces for my toys, for example I created a shoebox house for a 2-cm long koala bear and 2-cm long panda bear. I gave them many little details, like a moisturizer jar and a mirror, matchbox beds with soft cotton bud matresses, hand-sewn carpets, and a bathtub, to make their house and life cozy. I liked to take care of the little bears and checked what they might need to be more comfortable.

I think I work the same way when making films; I study the characters for a long time and try to figure out what they want, and what they need to represent who they are before I decide what the film will be about. I am currently developing a new film called Holy Moly. It will be a film about a mole and his grief, and I am having a good time trying to figure out what is needed to show who Moly is, what are his strengths and weaknesses, and in what way does these qualities make the expression of grief unique to him.

LAR: Is there anything else that you would like to share with our audience in Seattle for the premiere of Bear Hug here?

MD: I wish the audience a good screening, a good festival, and a good life. 

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