Hanna Järgenstedt on road trips, musicals and papier mâché

The first words that come to my mind to describe Hanna Järgenstedt’s films are “ugly cool” – and I mean it as the biggest compliment.

Based in Sweden, the animator (who is also an illustrator, graphic designer and set designer) is slowly but surely making a name for herself in the short film world. Her latest animated short, I Want to Know What Love Is, has been touring festivals (Uppsala Short Film Festival, Indie Lisboa…), gathering awards along the way (winner of the audience award at Leiden Shorts).

Discovering her work is like stepping into a parallel world, both familiar and dreamlike, funny and slightly dissonant. A fine observer of our quirks and obsessions, she takes everyday life as an inspiration (and never takes herself too seriously). Scrolling on public transports, making strange encounters abroad or going on disappointing dates become the starting points of her – sometimes very short – stories.

Hanna Järgenstedt builds her world brick by brick, mixing various materials, using clashing colours and composing songs that will get stuck in your head even if you don’t know Swedish. The result is an explosive cocktail, born out of joyful experiments and happy accidents.

She kindly agreed to talk to Underdog about her background, her unique process, and how following her intuition led her to find her signature style.

*Hanna Järgenstedt at the editing table*

What is your background and how did you get into animation?

It´s really mixed! Long story (not short): I was a genius at school, like math and everything was super easy for me so I thought I had to be an engineer or something but all I wanted to be was an actor so I hated that I was so good in school. I started doodling and doing funny looking characters in my notebook instead of listening to the teacher and all of a sudden I was not that great in school anymore – which was good, so I could finally go to theatre school. After that year I realized I really did not want to do theatre and I had a crisis until I remembered I’m kind of good at painting so I started art school but then they said that artist never get any money WHICH then led me to a super digital business school where I was going to be a content creator. This was of course hell on earth for me but I learned to use the animation program After Effects and that’s where it started.

Your papier mâché characters are one of your distinctive traits. Can you explain how they were created in the first place?

It was in this very business digital content creator school. I was very very frustrated that all we did was digital and analog stuff was looked upon as old and irrelevant. I missed working with tactile stuff with my hands and then a person I once met posted a tutorial of a super super pretty papier mache figure on Instagram and I thought I’m going to do the same. Mine turned out super ugly but I kind of liked how it looked anyway. So I did a couple of those and tried to animate them in the new program I’d learned in school to a song I wrote and it was like the penny dropped. The look of the papier maché characters haven’t changed much since the first film in 2018 to be honest. I like that they are so ugly and made of old news paper and some flour, but they can still be so human.

In your films you use all sorts of material: videos, photos, puppets… How do you assemble all these elements? Is it a very intuitive process, or a very methodic one?

It’s an extremely intuitive process. I just want to make a really nice scene or picture, and I just add and add and add until I feel satisfied with the result. I want a lot of things to happen in every frame. Sometimes I work as a scenographer IRL and making a scene for an animated movie is almost the same, just that it’s like a dream because I can make everything myself within a couple of hours with no budget. Like a really really expensive chair – I’m just a google search away from having it in the scene.

I Want to Know What Love Is, Hanna Järgenstedt

How was the road trip to Berlin that inspired your latest film I Want to Know What Love Is?

It was great! I have to say I did not go with a weird middle aged German man this time (although that has kind of also happened). It was me and Konrad (who made the music to the film and is also the face of the DJ dj_snorkzensation_000 AND also my boyfriend) went on the road with my old car and took the cheapest (which turned out to be very esthetically pleasing) ferry to Germany. It’s a very boring road from Stockholm to Berlin and my car can’t go that fast, so it was a highway with nothing but signs of fast food restaurants for 10 hours. And some trees and some sad small towns. I filmed almost everything so I had to look through some very boring material when doing the film. But I was very pleased with it all anyway, this ”boring” and sad is kind of a perfect esthetic to me, and I got very inspired. And once in Berlin I filmed everything with my small GoPro so I felt like an undercover agent. I could never have done the film without doing the trip, because everything that happens in the movie kind of happened IRL in one way or another.

“a highway with nothing but signs of fast food restaurants for 10 hours”

Music plays a big part in your films and some of your shorts include very catchy songs! How was it making a musical with Confessions of a Brat?

Thank you very much! I have worked with the closest people I have, my sister and my boyfriend. They´re both very talented producers so that’s very convenient. I come with an idea and they translate it to music. Confessions of a Brat was made from a text I’ve written about my exes and it was like there was no other way than making it into a musical because everything else would be too embarrassing, to have like dialogue and stuff.

Your paintings and your films depict everyday scenes in a slightly distorted way. The result is both familiar and eerie. What are your inspirations?

My paintings are inspired by the Göteborgskoloristerna, a 100 year old painting crew from my home town. But also a more fresh reference is Joey Yu, an illustrator from London I think who’s the expert of swooshy illustrations with some weird angles. But really it’s just everyday life, seeing people at restaurants or really everything that you can see in the town. I also recently discovered that I have some binocular vision problems that maybe are the reason why nothing ever comes together ”realistically” or with the right perspective. In film it’s of course Ulu Braun, the master of video collages and also satire. Also late 90s movies, like Trainspotting, all Wong Kar-wai movies with fun angles and punky shots. In some ways it’s also Pettson and Findus [children’s books created by Sven Nordqvist], in the way that I want a lot of things happening in the picture and I want people to see new things every time they see the film.