Norwegian filmmaker Markus Tangre began making puppets at 11, as soon as his grandmother taught him to use a sewing machine. Like Dr. Victor Frankenstein, he felt mad with power as he brought his creatures to life.
Inspired by the technicalities of Jim Henson, the wonky expressiveness of Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network shows, and the muted colors and melancholic feel of Eastern European animations, Tangre has stitched together his first short film, “Ivar,” which premiered at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.
“Ivar” is a four-minute monologue by Anne, a grumpy puppet with a furrowed brow and permanent frown, that begins with her noticing her husband Ivar’s rank scent as she lies next to him, trying to fall asleep. That smell leads her to vent everything she hates about Ivar, from his stubby neck to his laugh to his lack of ambition.
The music and sound design by Benjamin Nerheim provide the perfect soundtrack to spiraling hatred. The whistle from a tea kettle represents her anger boiling over before leading into a montage of surreal imagery backed by one long, operatic note.
That montage includes several 2D animations by Steph Hope, including a bald, rubberhose human punching out another in a bar, and a glass of milk shattering and transforming into the form of Anne.
While a live-action film might use stock footage for this rapid-fire montage of seething imagery, “Ivar” creates its own stock footage to fit within the universe’s aesthetic.
The film has a grainy quality meant to look like an avant-garde 1970s tape dug up from the archives and hammers home the dreary social realism. And while the puppets Tangre sewed in childhood were vibrant and cheery, inspired by “The Muppets,” he’s taken a much different approach to the world of “Ivar.”
“I’m trying to grossify the puppet design a little bit,” he said. “I think it’s cool when they look gross and weird and still are able to have human emotions.”
Tangre’s puppet-making process begins by sculpting the creature out of clay, then making a mold and pouring expanding foam into it. From there comes the addition of details like eyes and hair, a somewhat improvisational process that informs the character far more than pre-planned design sketches do.
“You learn stuff about the character as you go,” Tangre said. “If you squish the face, and it makes a weird expression, then, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s a cranky guy.’”
Many puppets in the film appear for only a few seconds: a pig-nosed motorcyclist, Ivar’s friend with a pear-shaped head and a yipping, yarn dog with spindly legs.
Attention to detail is Tangre’s greatest accomplishment with “Ivar.” The sets are intricately designed with blink-and-you’ll-miss-it details. A brief shot in a bathroom, for example, reveals a bottle of valium and a Russian nesting doll on the shelves.
Tangre’s philosophy was that “Every scene is important to build the world. If you skip out on a few details, then you don’t really buy it.”
As for Ivar, the viewer only catches a few glimpses of his grotesque form before the climax, from a shot of his felt mouth messily chewing what looks like baby food to a 2D-animated distortion making him look like a cross between a vulture and Mr. Burns from “The Simpsons.”
But when the true Ivar is revealed, sitting upright in bed as the crescent moon hits his face, he looks meek and even sweet. This is the crux of the film. Does Anne truly hate her husband, or is she simply experiencing the resentments and annoyances that can arise in long-term relationships?
Tangre said that’s up for the viewer to decide, but he hopes that he’s accomplished his goals for the film: to combine the techniques of arthouse cinema with a medium often derided as childish, and to tell a human story with very inhuman characters.
Tangre described the atmosphere on set as highly technical. A shot of Anne and Ivar in bed took three hours of takes because of all the actions involved: pulling up a bedsheet, turning off a lamp and making the two puppets smooch. All the while, Tangre and fellow puppeteer David Bjørnstad were crammed nearly on top of each other underneath the bed, holding their hands up in the air and watching the takes on monitors.
But there was also a magical, joyous feeling as crew members’ eyes lit up, watching these cartoonish characters come to life in front of them.
“Once you see the puppets onscreen, you believe them straight away, I guess, because they have such blank faces. Once they look into the camera or look at each other, and they say something, you can put your own real feelings or emotions into it,” Tangre said. “I guess being a puppet makes it a bit more universal.”
“Ivar” premiered as part of the Short Film Program 4 at 9 p.m. on Jan. 25 at The Yarrow Theatre. Learn more and reserve tickets at festival.sundance.org.
‘Ivar’ in-person screenings
- 5:30 p.m., Jan. 26, Megaplex Redstone 3
- 9 p.m., Jan. 31, Broadway Centre Cinemas 6
- 3:15 p.m., Feb. 1, Holiday Village Cinemas 3
Online
- 8 a.m., Jan. 29-11:55 p.m., Feb. 1