"What's the matter with Leo?" his father asks when Leo can't read, write, draw, eat neatly, or speak. "He's just a late bloomer", explains his mother. And sure enough, one day in his own good time, Leo shows everyone how glorious it is to finally bloom.
Bulder's snowball fight with his best friend Modika was interrupted when Lex steals her attention away with some quiet playtime. Frustrated, Bulder attempts to win her back, resulting in a mischievous plan that he may well come to regret.
Akiko Takakura is one of the last survivors of the Hiroshima bomb. During Obon, she receives the spirits of her parents and is haunted by memories. Finally Akiko experiences paternal love in the middle of the ruins of Hiroshima.
Skin for Skin is a dark allegory of greed and spiritual reckoning set during the early days of the fur trade. In 1823, the Governor of the largest fur-trading company in the world travels across his Dominion, extracting ever-greater riches from the winter bounty of animal furs. In his brutal world of profit and loss, animals are slaughtered to the brink of extinction until the balance of power shifts, and the forces of nature exact their own terrible price. With nods to Melville and Coleridge, directors Carol Beecher & Kevin Kurytnik have created a visually stunning contemporary myth about the cost of arrogance and greed.
ALEXANDER THE GRAPE, an unfinished cut-paper animated short from Jim Henson from 1965, relates the fable of a young grape with big ambitions who learns that it is better to accept yourself than to try to be something you are not. The short was reconstructed from film and audio elements; images from Jim’s storyboard fill in missing segments of the animation.
When an advanced race of giant lobsters from outer space land on Earth, no one can figure out why they've come. A complete failure to communicate on both ends leads to panic and pandemonium. Why are they here? What do they want? In this clever throwback to the ‘50s B-movie, a small neighbourhood learns the value of clear communication.
An important human story told from the perspective of mixed race blood cancer patients who are forced to reflect on their multiracial identities and complex genetics as they struggle with a seemingly impossible search to find bone marrow donors, all while exploring what role race plays in medicine.
In this animated short, young Winston, who suffers from chronic asthma, isn’t able to participate in the everyday activities of his peers and classmates. He copes with the predicament through his vivid imagination, with paper and crayons. On one particularly rainy afternoon, Winston discovers that the magic of imagination has the power to transform and empower, and his skills and talents save the day.
Two men and one woman addicted to videogames are interviewed to tell their stories. In this documentary, they are animated characters resembling the ones on computer games.
The film tells the story of a member of the Polish underground who acted as a courier during World War II and whose most prominent mission was to inform the Allied powers of Nazi crimes against the Jews of Europe in an effort to prevent the Holocaust.
When Helene Angel walks home from school with her older brother she is attacked by a street gang and painted white. The effect on Helene and her family is devastating. Helene locks herself in her room, her brother blames himself for not having successfully defended his sister, and the media descends on their neighborhood, completely disrupting her small family. But an outpouring of love and understanding from Helene's friends, classmates and family helps her face what has happened and draws the community together. Inspired by actual events, WHITEWASH conveys a powerful message that transcends age and race, told in an entertaining way perfect for children of all ages.
For their honeymoon, Anna and Mathieu went to Turkey. With camera in hand, they traced the footsteps of Garabed, the Armenian grand-father of Mathieu, who escaped the 1915 genocide. In this country where speaking of the Armenian genocide could be dangerous, their name with Turkish intonations serves a purpose to get people talking about their idea of the Turkish involvement during 1915 tragedy. A road trip across the country leads to a sad confirmation - the denial has become institutional.
The Formation of Clouds follows the steps of a young girl in the midst of transformation, clearly delineating that odd moment when one is no longer a child, exactly, but not yet an adult either.
Narrated by Tim Curry and based on the book by Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, a lonely, lost marzipan pig reaches out with love, in a strange chain of events, to an owl, a mouse and a hibiscus flower.
In this short abstract-impressionist film the animation and music were made simultaneously in an organic process of symbiotic creativity. Filmmaker Iriz Pääbo tells the highly subjective story of a complete hockey game using a new cinematic vocabulary she calls "animbits." Pääbo readily admits she is not the biggest fan of Canada's national game, so the great, though highly underappreciated NHL stalwart of the '60s and '70s, Eric Nesterenko, was her hockey muse in this artistic journey. A lyrical and wonderfully unorthodox interpretation of hockey.
When a bus driver takes a break from his route, a very unlikely volunteer springs up to take his place -- a pigeon! But you've never met one like this before.