In the short film "Inheritance", Rut insists on telling her story as a Holocaust survivor to her granddaughter, the heavily pregnant Rebecka, who at first cannot bear to listen.
"It's always felt like I should tackle this story, but I haven't really felt ready; it's incredibly dark to go into this," says Hannah Arnesen.
Ten years ago she debuted as a picture book author for children. However, her latest book, “Stardust,” is a graphic novel for adults and teenagers that took five years to complete. “An ecological manifesto filled with love for the earth,” summarized the Italian newspaper La Repubblica.
The book - with 200 paintings - was first published by an Italian publisher because the Swedish publishers couldn't imagine publishing a picture book for adults. But after all the European translations, it was recently also published in Swedish.
All images
The Bindefeld scholarship of 600,000 kronor means she can now complete her first short film. Hannah Arnesen writes the script, directs and paints all the images. However, the animation itself is done by others.
The film is based on the story of her own grandmother, who was sent to Sweden just before the outbreak of war. She was 15 years old and arrived with the so-called children's transport of over 500 Jewish children from Germany.
Most of her family remained; everyone except one brother was murdered in the concentration camps.
"I grew up at my grandmother's bedside, she lived to be 98 and told me a lot about her parents and the others. She had 30 cousins and almost all of them died in the Holocaust," says Hannah Arnesen, who describes her grandmother as talkative but traumatized.
She almost always had the blinds drawn and outside was her grandfather's colorful garden.
Never knew
While peace was being celebrated in Sweden, more and more truths about the extermination camps were being revealed. For Hannah Arnesen's grandmother, "her whole life was a sorrow." The grandmother also never learned exactly how her mother died.
"We know that she was in various camps, and probably ended up in one called Stutthof. There, many women were drowned in the sea one winter, and that is the image that I have chosen to portray."
In the upcoming short film, Arnesen lets the flowers in the garden magically grow into Grandma Rut.
"I think I've been pretty good at finding light in the darkness. I think my artistry is a lot about that."
Born: 1992.
Occupation: Illustrator and author who debuted in 2016 with the picture book "At night we fly".
Current: Receives this year's Bindefeld Scholarship in memory of the Holocaust to be able to make an animated short film that "illustrates how the legacy of the Holocaust cuts through generations and can finally no longer be ignored."
