Anna Samo

Anna Samo is a director, animator and process driven artist. She carved out her path as independent filmmaker notable for the playful use of materials and analog animation techniques. Anna sees animation as a way to think with her hands in order to process what happens outside of the studio walls. Her work explores the human condition and questions the place and responsibilities of the artist in a world troubled by disasters and violence. Anna’s award-winning short films are screened around the globe at film festivals and spark conversations in classrooms as part of educational programs. She is one the co-founders of “Animation Speak/Easy“ a bi-monthly screening and discussion series in Brooklyn, New York celebrating the art of animation.

Anna received fellowships from the Toepfer Stiftung, the Rotary Foundation and The Jerome Foundation. She has been invited as a visiting artist to talk about her work and to teach workshops at Pratt, Harvard, SVA and other educational institutions in the US and in Germany.

During her residency at the MQ, Anna plans to focus on developing her new animated experimental sci-fi short “The Friend.“ The project examines the hopes, dreams and fears of humans in relation to Artificial Intelligence and questions how our biological nature and self-consciousness inform our experience of the world around us.