portraits
Portrait
Digital creation

Michelle and Uri Kranot, artists and filmmakers

In our families, every generation for as long as we can remember has immigrated, so no one lives where they were born.

For almost twenty years, Michelle and Uri Kranot have been telling their stories through moving images and immersive devices that evoke stories of exile and guilt. They are the creators of the interactive experience The Hangman at Home, a new addition to the Institut français' VR Selection, which allows the French cultural network abroad to organise non-commercial screenings. 

Updated on 15/03/2023

5 min

Michelle and Uri Kranot operate as Tin Drum, the research and development studio they founded together. Originally from Israel, they are now based in Denmark where they run the ANIDOX project at VIA University College. Interdisciplinary artists, particularly in the field of animation and new technologies, they have been working as a duo for twenty years now. Their practice is experimental and explores a range of media, including emerging ones, through forms that hybridize traditional methods, such as drawing, with tools such as VR. Their work often addresses historical or political subjects using a poetic approach, blending fact and fiction, documentary and reverie. Both are members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Académie des César. 

Michelle and Uri Kranot's work is frequently deployed across multiple media. This is the case with their latest project, The Hangman at Home, inspired by Carl Sandburg's 1922 poem of the same name. The work is divided into three distinct parts: The Hangman at Home, an animated short; The Hangman at Home - VR, an immersive experience premiered at the Venice Biennale; and We are at Home, a multi-user VR installation premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2021. All of these intersecting narratives take as their starting point the figure of the executioner and the questions that beset him when he returns home at night. Using animation to multiply layers, whose different facets reveal our similarities and differences, Michelle and Uri Kranot's films raise universal ethical questions. 

In recent years, Michelle and Uri Kranot have created a number of films and multimedia experiences that have had significant international resonance, including Hollow Land (2013), Black Tape (2014), How Long Not Long (2016), Nothing Happens (2017), Songbird (2018) and, most recently, The Hangman at Home. These projects have won them the Fipresci Prize, the Best French Short Film Award at the Annecy Animation Film Festival, the Danish Arts Foundation Award for Performing Arts, the Lumen Award for Digital Arts, and have also been shortlisted for the Oscars. Their installations have also been exhibited at the Nikolaj Kunsthal in Copenhagen, the Kunsthalle in Vienna, the Venice Biennale, the Kunstmuseum in Stuttgart, the Today Art Museum in Beijing and the Kunsthal Charlottenborg in Copenhagen. 

  • 2013

    2013

    Hollow Land.

  • 2016

    2016

    How Long Not Long, Fipresci Prize at the Annecy Festival.

  • 2017

    2017

    Nothing Happens.

  • 2018

    2018

    Songbird.

  • 2021

    2021

    The Hangman at Home | We Are at Home, best VR immersive work at the Venice Biennale.

L'institut français, LAB