Interview with Michelle Kranot (The Hangman at Home | We Are at Home)

Acclaimed artists and filmmakers Michelle and Uri Kranot – whose previous experience with multimedia filmmaking and conceptually progressive storytelling includes the multi-award-winning projects Hollow Land, How Long Not Long, Nothing Happens and Songbird – have again combined their efforts for another thought-provoking and beautifully rendered animation piece. Taking the form of three distinct outputs that will be participating in a variety of festivals this summer, The Hangman At Home exists as a short film (premiering this week at the Krakow Film Festival), a single-user VR experience (part of this month’s Annecy Festival and International Film Festival Rotterdam programmes) as well as a multi-user VR performance and installation We Are At Home that will see its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival next week.
While each offers their own unique experience, they are conceptually linked by themes of intimacy, complicity, voyeurism and participation as the audience finds themselves alternately looking-in on, interacting with and occupying the personal spaces of a succession of strangers during their private moments. Taking inspiration from the 1922 Carl Sandburg poem of the same name, the scenarios that play out conjure a variety of emotions and personal reflections as regards our own habits, curiosities and social responsibilities as both audience member and participant of the world at large.
The Hangman At Home/We Are At Home is internationally co-produced by Lana Tankosa Nikolic of Late Love Productions in Denmark, Katayoun Dibamehr and Avi Amar of Floréal Films in France, Emmanuel-Alain Raynal and Pierre Baussaron of MIYU Production (France), Marc Bertrand and Julie Roy of The National Film Board of Canada. In anticipation of the busy month ahead for all three outputs we were enthusiastic to catch up with Michelle Kranot about the thematic driving forces behind the project, the processes behind its stunning overall look and her work in supporting similarly ambitious new work as producer and creative director of The Animation Workshop’s creative development platform ANIDOX.