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Sapegin Pjotr
Born in Russia in 1955, Pjotr Sapegin worked as a set designer in various theatres in Moscow for 15 years. He became involved in puppet animation after moving to Norway in 1990 where he now co-owns the Pravda production company in Oslo.
As a director of animated shorts and advertising spots, Sapegin has won national and international awards and acclaim. One Day a Man Bought a House (1998) collected 21 awards, including the Hiroshima Award. Other career highlights include Snails (1999) and In a Corner of the World (1999), both entries in the official competition at the 2000 Annecy Festival. In recent years, he has been exploring his interest in Shakespeare with the documentary My Little Hamlet and the animated short In a Corner of the World.
His 15th film, Aria, inspired by Puccini's famous opera Madama Butterfly, reveals his sense of tragedy and his skills as a director. Released in 2001, the film garnered 10 international awards, including the Wooden Wolf Grand Prize at the Black Nights Film Festival.
In 2004, he completed Through My Thick Glasses. This splendid short transforms a grandfather's memories of the Second World War into a tongue-in-cheek epic starring clay puppets. Evoking children's drawings and expressionist paintings, the film is filled with spatial distortion, imaginative lighting and narrative shortcuts. This falsely naive tale is an eloquent interpretation of a terrible period in the 20th century.
Recognized and respected by the international animation community, Pjotr Sapegin is a prolific filmmaker whose style, sense of humour, and aesthetics never fail to astonish and delight.
