Discover Movies

Commissioned by the Toronto Animated Image Society

A young couple lives in their old truck with a full sized alligator. When they stop to eat at a roadside cantina in rural Mexico, the Colonel who runs the town takes a threatening interest in the lady, which he comes to regret when he meets the couple’s traveling companion.

Teenaged Nicole experiences mixed emotions as she spins the bottle for the first time.

The story follows the journey of an artist, with whom many of us can identify in different ways.

A young girl shares her passion with her pet turtle.

When Aster’s life falls into chaos, their Peace Lily wilts away from neglect.

Children guide the audience through a vision of shifting digital polygons in this CGI take of the beloved NFB classic Helicopter Canada. An expression of the experience of wonder and discovery, carved from pixels and produced as part of the 10th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.

Blackout is a short, animated documentary about the 2003 power failure in much of the eastern seaboard of the U.S and Canada for up to 4 days.

Gifted animator Leslie Supnet collaborates with Winnipeg storyteller Glen Johnson for this contemplative comic fantasy about a time-obsessed squirrel.

As a surgeon’s daughter, she once roamed the hospital with wonder. Returning as a patient in adulthood, she encounters a medical system where machine precision has displaced the human touch. Using charcoal and paint on glass, filmmaker Carine Khalifé tells a personal story using art as a vehicle for memory, resistance and a quest for meaning.

Colourful puppets illustrate the old French song about Cadet Rousselle, who falls down a ladder, who trips on battlements, and whose dogs will not obey him. The animated figures carry our hero through his predicaments with colour and verve.

The story of two friends on the cusp of adolescence, Rachel Samson's warm-hearted animation is an ode to those special summer days that contain major changes.

An animation over 45 years in the making, Wings to the Sun is an artistic depiction of a ceremony held by the people of an ancient community living on a vast plateau. During the ceremony the community offers its most precious possession to their revered Sun God.

The crew of the Enterprise find themselves on a planet where they are confronted by Girl Power!

A whole man contained in half of a body struggles to maintain his daily routine and provide for the child in his care.

Jack MacDonald painted in both worlds: figurative and the abstract. Playtime pays homage to his dedication, spirit and wonderful subject matter—both real and imaginary.

A little girl running a lemonade stand has run in with death

Join this peculiar hero as he sings his way through a mundane office building, achieving profound results along the way.

An idea for backgrounds never used, late 1940s. Silent film.

A band of totally professional pirates attempts to fix their ship.

In a story inspired by real events, Annisa, a young South Sudanese midwife, finds herself in a race against time to save the life of a young mother (Agnes) who has suffered postpartum haemorrhage. With conventional methods not seeming to work and no resources, Annisa must use her own resources and training to save Agnes from the same fate that befell her own mother ten years earlier.

An amusing and clever exploration of an artist's struggle to find his own style and vision, despite disapproval of that vision from people in power.

An excerpt from Kurt Schwitters' "Ursonate" (Sontata in primitive sounds) parades across the screen thanks to a Remington typewriter.

Stop motion animation based on a story I wrote in grade 3.

Life is like a blackboard you write on with chalk. Everything is written, everything is erased. Especially our first love in elementary school. Especially our first teacher in that school.

A deadbeat dad loses his temper after realizing he bought the wrong concert tickets for his daughter's birthday.

A claymation animated short created by Sandra Law

Henry, a lonely wooden, is hypnotized by what he believes to be a friend.

A stripper dancing in a club at night flooded in blue psychedelic visuals.

A Palestinian fisherman tries to breach the naval blockade in Gaza to get treatment for his sick daughter

Based on a traditional spoken tale, this Bertolt Brecht inspired musical humorously denounces poverty and insecurity, while ending on a very sarcastic note. A fine example of activist hand-crafted filmmaking.

Created as part of the DÉRAPAGE festival of non-narrative audio-visual creation, "Monotonie de l'Age Adulte" ("Monotony of adulthood") is an exploration of the atmosphere, feelings and memories of the past, especially around birthdays. Melancholy and nostalgia for the passing of time...

As he travels, The Fool accumulates experiences to leave behind its status as a non-being and acquires knowledge that transforms it into increasingly complex characters.

A young woman falls in love with a waitress in a greasy-yet-nostalgic Hong Kong-style cafe, but a language gap divides the two - or is there something more?

An ironic look at the limitations of words. An early exploration in film animation.

He is a magician. She is a firefighter. Isolating themselves from the chaos of a world in turmoil, the two lovers live in a crane basket high in the sky, where they go about their daily business. Their challenge is to keep their heads, here up above it all, while everything is falling apart down below. But when reality calls – when fires need quenching and people need entertaining – how can they best make themselves useful in a world gone off the rails?

A cautionary tale about a man who eats bugs...

A green-skinned “sissy devil” probes the depths of internet intelligence, composing an “advanced search” on an antiquated search engine.

Featuring the music of Socalled, Theodore Bikel and Sans Pression, this whimsical and bittersweet short mixes a traditional Yiddish ballad with rap and puppetry.

"Done on cels almost entirely. I rotoscoped werewolves and cops and babies and animals and maidens-in-distress and put on a dub reggae track by my son Mossman so it bubbles along in a kind of nonsensical way…very colourful and frantic but not seizure-inducing as some of my earlier work was." –R.R.

This film tells the story of the efforts of the first Canadian to attempt to fly a human powered heavier than air aircraft

This short animation celebrates menopause through the story of Mabel. She’s juggling work, teenagers and an elderly mom. Now she’s got hot flashes and chin hairs! Before you can say "estrogen," purple-haired Mabel finds herself the heroine of her own adventure. Colourful computer animation and a rich musical score offer a reassuring look at one of the most important passages in a woman's life.

Instructional video detailing how to successfully host a Saturday night hockey game watching party.

This fast-paced and entertaining animated film is about water and the demands placed on our waterways by agriculture, industry, and urban life. An army of droplets, led by The Chief, shows what happens to water from the time it falls as rain until it reaches its destination.

A romance scene, an opening theme, a high-speed train of perception. The tropes and aesthetic of anime are deconstructed and reexamined, the frames accelerated, and blasted into a different realm of the cinematic language.

A disembodied narration guides you on a sinister tour of the psyche.

Child at play with a rocking horse and other toys

A short documentary about gender identity issues

Usually it’s not a good sign when a film opens with death walking in the door; however, in this wry short, the appearance of the Grim Reaper (who exits again as quickly as he arrived) is just one of several intersecting stories that unfold within the hive-like confines of the film’s tranquil universe. Deftly playing with narrative structure – while challenging the viewer to keep up – “Les Abeilles domestiques” is a masterful exercise in “deconstruction” that’s both extremely clever and highly entertaining.

An air travel romance.

This project moves sound and image using wind movements. It shows the alteration of spectrograms with these motion vectors and applies a sound resynthesis.

This film illustrates the theory that a sudden change in climate caused by a stellar explosion resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs.

A young boy falls asleep in school and awakens in the lives of past family members. A wandering old spirit searches for the reason it keeps returning to the same dark woods.

"Plugin" is the story of a mechanical city in which every citizen is a part of the city itself, responsible for generating lights by connecting the male and female parts of the mechanism. Everyone seems to fit into this perfect puzzle except the main character, G-O, a man who does not match the rest of his world. G-O finally finds his perfect match – another man – but the City Authority try to stop this uncommon union. It is up to G-O and Ico to show their city that every connection is after all part of the same energy - love.

Short animated film by Marv Newland

"The director's feelings of envy and resentment of a roommate's pronoun-of-choice eventually evolve into delight in one simple word. This freedom allows for new embodiments of gender—as beautiful and strange as a unicorn, a pair of wings or a bouquet of roses." - Inside Out 2014 Toronto LGBT Film Festival

Early abstract 3D film by animation master Norman McLaren.

There's a music band there that does "mouth music". Here, the mouth occupies all sound space, as much through the music as through the words of an invented language.