Anna is a Swedish animation director based in Stockholm and London. Her latest film is an animation for Insmed, who bring awareness to the rare lung disease NTM.

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People suffering from NTM are often not diagnosed by their doctors. To change this Insmed paired real NTM patients with animators to create original films that communicate and highlight how hard it is for patients to live without a diagnosis.

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Trapped is the reimagination of Beth’s story using stop-motion animation. Prior to being diagnosed, Beth’s repetitive symptoms made her feel like she couldn’t escape from NTM. She felt imprisoned in a monstrous contraption that made her cough constantly, and feel fatigued and feverish.

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Anna Mantzaris 'The agency Area23 came to me with this idea, but they gave me a lot of freedom in how to execute it. I really liked that it was based on a real person's testimony, somehow it made it more important to me to be able to portray it in the right way and to treat the subject properly and with respect. It took us around four months to create the film, and I worked with a large and fantastic team. Since the process was quite intense, I was mostly directing, but I'm really protective with the puppets so I did the faces and hair on them. It's not so much about other people not being good, but more that it's so much about these small details and it's more difficult to transmit that, besides that I also enjoy making them! '

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