The National Film Board of Canada has greenlit 16 productions and co-productions over the past year, among them three new animated shorts: Theodore Ushev‘s Les Villes Inconnues des Mères Disparues, Michèle Lemieux’s Polka, made on the NFB’s Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen, and Mochi Lin’s Hostel la Vista. The slate of films, all now in production, includes feature-length documentaries, mid-length works, animated shorts and innovative digital series that explore contemporary Canadian realities through distinct and original creative voices.
The three animated shorts, all 100 percent NFB productions:
Les Villes Inconnues des Mères Disparues, directed by Ushev, the Oscar-nominated animator behind The Physics of Sorrow. In a world where cities are named after the first mothers who settled there, a young adopted girl writes a postcard to her birth mother and entrusts it to a postman, who sets out on an epic journey to find her. Mélanie Boudreau Blanchard and Christine Noël produce for the French Animation Unit.
Polka, directed by Lemieux and created on the NFB’s pinscreen, a unique device containing 240,000 pins, in special sleeves to allow calibrated movement through a screen that Alexandre Alexeïeff pioneered and Jacques Drouin passed on to Lemieux, who used it on Here and the Great Elsewhere in 2012. The short invites the viewer into the raw materials of a painted work and prompts a reflection on its physicality. Boudreau Blanchard and Noël produce for the French Animation Unit.
Hostel la Vista, directed by Lin, in which a decrepit Mile End hostel in Montreal becomes a microcosm of modern-day alienation, connection, courage and survival. Maral Mohammadian produces for the English Animation Unit.
The documentary slate:
Feature-length: The Crossing (director Aisling Chin-Yee; producers Nabil Mehchi and Frank Fiorito of Noble Television, Sami Tesfazghi of Rane Films and Rob Vroom of the NFB; co-production), which follows two young men who flee persecution in Ghana and, after harrowing journeys across continents, cross into Canada on foot through a deadly winter storm; Prairie Chicken (director Sinakson Trevor Solway; producer Coty Savard, Western Documentary Unit), which searches out the cultural roots of the Prairie Chicken Dance in the heart of Blackfoot Country; The Whale Effect (director Duncan McDowall; producer Rob Vroom, Eastern Documentary Unit), which reframes whales as agents in the living systems we depend on; and You Don’t Know Dick (director Adam Lordon; producer Liz Cowie, Eastern Documentary Unit), which re-examines the story and legacy of Richard Hatfield, New Brunswick’s longest-serving premier, from the rural Bible Belt to Studio 54 and a pot scandal involving Queen Elizabeth II.
Mid-length: Demain Depuis Diane (director Ariel St-Louis Lamoureux; producer Melanie Brière, French Documentary Unit), about a Yellowknife woman who raised $1.5 million recycling copper from a mine nearing closure and now has to convince other mining companies to back her cause; Garolou (director Louise Lalonde; producer Christine Aubé, French Documentary Unit), a portrait of what the NFB calls “the legendary group that revolutionized Canadian music,” told by one of its own members; and Making Lemonade (director Connie Edwards; producer Coty Savard, Western Documentary Unit), in which Fred Keating shares what he is thinking and feeling as he travels through the stages of cognitive decline alongside his family.
Shorts and series: The Garden Where the Flowers Grew (director Michelle Mason; producer Teri Snelgrove, Western Documentary Unit), on the difference between retribution, healing and justice; God in a Roadside Ditch (director Karsten Wall; producer Alicia Smith, Central Documentary Unit), a 15-minute stylized nature film on the short life of the adult mayfly in Manitoba’s Interlake region and how light pollution and climate change affect it; Nooshafarin (director Leila Khalilzadeh; producer Rob Vroom, Eastern Documentary Unit), in which the Iranian-Canadian singer and actress shares her story of artistry in exile; A Place to Call Home (director Katłı̨̀ą Lafferty; producer Chehala Leonard, Western Documentary Unit), on the housing crisis in the Northwest Territories through the stories of Indigenous women in N’dilo; Snow King: From Olympian to Narco (director Chelsea McMullan; producers Sean O’Neill of Visitor Media and Sherien Barsoum of the NFB; co-production), a three-part series tracing Ryan Wedding’s path from snowboarding prodigy to the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list; and Sundance Harvest (director Aïcha Diop; producers Niki Little, Kate Vollum and Hannah Donegan, Central Documentary Unit), which follows 29-year-old urban/rural farmer Cheyenne Sundance’s search for a permanent solution to land access.
Source: National Film Board of Canada
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
