A native of Saint-Basile, New Brunswick, Canada, Anne-Marie Sirois completed a bachelor’s degree in Visual Arts at Université de Moncton in 1981. She discovered her passion for animated film at a young age, leading her to attend animation workshops with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She directed her first animated film in 1985, Les Joies de Noël. Her second film, L’Avertissement, produced by Cinémarévie Coop Ltée of Edmundston, was released in 1986. It won an Award of Merit the same year at the Atlantic Film and Video Festival in Halifax.
Her next film Maille Maille (NFB-Moncton) won an Award of Excellence at the 1987 Atlantic Film and Video Festival in Halifax, as well as a Silver Apple Award at the National Educational Film and Video Festival in Oakland, California, in 1989. In the summer of 1996, she was invited to the 12th Annual World Festival of Animation Films in Zagreb, Croatia, to show Animastress (NFB-Moncton, 1994). Joséphine (NFB-Montréal, 2000), based on that song by Acadian group Zéro Degré Celsius, was awarded the prize for Best Acadian Film at the Festival international du cinéma francophone en Acadie (international French-language film festival in Acadie), as well as the Prix Éloize for artist of the year in cinema-video-television, presented by the Association acadienne des artistes professionnel.le.s du Nouveau-Brunswick (AAAPNB).
In 2003, she directed her first experimental animated film, PSSST, a collaborative work with percussionist Michel Deschênes. This work was put on the program of more than thirty experimental and animation film festivals around the world, including Rio de Janeiro, London, Zagreb, Barcelona, Melbourne, Ankara, and Madrid. Anne-Marie was awarded a second Prix Éloize for artist of the year in cinema-video-television for PSSST, in 2004.
Anne-Marie is also an illustrator and writer, and has published three stories: Le Petit Chaperon Mauve (1995), Rose Neige et les six nains (2000) and Ma Gribouille tigrée (Bouton d’or Acadie, 2006).
In the spring of 1995, Anne-Marie initiated an artistic process to turn irons into sculptures. She has exhibited these transformed objects – as varied as they are amusing – in several New Brunswick and Quebec art galleries. Through her fertile imagination, the artist shares with us her unconventional, playful, sometimes poetical and always humorous vision of the world. This in turn brought her to self-publish the 148-pages Pourquoi 100 fers / Ironic Irons in 2010, which showcased 15 years of sculpture making in with irons.
In 2012, Anne-Marie was awarded the Éloizes for artist of the year in visual arts.