Marjut Rimminen

Marjut Rimminen is a Finnish-born animator and film director who has lived and worked in London since 1974. Her short films take their subjects from life, and often difficult ones: the lives of women and girls, how childhood shapes adulthood, the silences of family life, and the aftermath of war in ordinary homes. She handles them with lightness, play and dark humour. She works in drawn cel, puppets, clay, collage, pixilation, live action, 3D and digital compositing, and often combines several in one frame.

The Stain (1991), made with Christine Roche, is a dark domestic fable of incest and family secrets; it won special jury prizes at Hiroshima and San Francisco in 1992. Many Happy Returns (1996), which draws on her own childhood squint, won the Grand Prix at the Tampere International Short Film Festival and first prize at Fantoche in 1997, and was nominated for the Cartoon d'Or. I'm Not a Feminist, but... (1986), from the cartoons of Christine Roche, won the Special Jury Prize at Cinanima. Some Protection (1987), made for Channel 4's Blind Justice series, sets the prison testimony of Josie O'Dwyer in her own voice, and is discussed in the histories of animated documentary. Learned by Heart (Sydämeen kätketty, 2007), directed with Päivi Takala, looks at Finnish families after the Second World War through archive film and animation, and won Best Animation at Tampere in 2007.

Her earlier film The Bridge (Silta, 1982), financed by YLE, Swedish Radio and the Finnish Film Foundation, is a satire of war and peace. For Finnish children she co-directed the stop-motion series Urpo & Turpo (1996) with Liisa Helminen, from Hannele Huovi's books.