Despite her short life, Birgitta Jansson had an influence on animated films both in Sweden and around the world. Her international breakthrough came with the short film Semesterhemmet (‘The Vacation Home’), which scooped three awards at the Annecy International Animation Festival in 1981. This established her as a pioneer of a new way of making animated documentaries based around real-life soundtracks. In the film she used claymation techniques at around the same time as Peter Lord and David Sproxton started making similar films at the British company Aardman Animations.