La maison du hérisson

Winner of over 35 international awards, Hedgehog's Home is an animated film by Eva Cvijanović. Based on the classic story by Branko Ćopić, a writer from the former Yugoslavia, it is a warm and universal tale that reminds us there truly is no place like home.

Based on the story by Branko Ćopić, this animated short tells the tale of a hedgehog living in a lush and lively forest. He is respected and envied by the other animals. However, Hedgehog’s devotion to his home annoys a quartet of insatiable beasts. Together, they march off towards Hedgehog’s home and spark a tense and prickly standoff. (Serbo-croatian with English Subtitles)

This gentle tale about mortality works in subliminal ways. When an old man is visited by Death at his home in the meadows, he has to delve deep to secure more time for himself. Does he have the strength to find the answers he needs? Can we negotiate our time on earth? How do we reconcile our mortal fate? A lyrical look at a reality as old as humanity, yet as young as today. Based on a story by Richard Kennedy.

This short documentary introduces us to Alden Nowlan, winner of Canada’s 1967 Governor General’s Award for poetry. His empathy for ordinary people was evident in his work as a poet, journalist, short-story writer, novelist and playwright. Nowlan’s writing is admired far beyond his native Maritimes, but he never forgot his roots, which he drew on for inspiration. This film, shot just before his death in 1983, records him reminiscing and reading from his work.

In this feature documentary, husband-and-wife team Karsten Heuer and Leanne Allison (Being Caribou), along with their 2-year-old son and dog, retrace the literary footsteps of Canadian writer Farley Mowat. They canoe east from Calgary towards the Prairies (the geography of Farley's Born Naked and Owls in the Family) and then traverse the same paths that Mowat took more than 60 years earlier in Never Cry Wolf and People of the Deer. Their epic 5,000 km journey—trekking, sailing, portaging and paddling—ends in the Maritimes, at Mowat's Nova Scotia summer home.

An investigation into how language is changing in the age of COVID-19. The complete upheaval of social relationships today is leading to the reinterpretation of certain terms, which have suddenly taken on a fatal connotation. This film is a funeral mass in memory of the word “contact.”

This short animation is set to the words of poet Hélène Dorion. In the film, a man and a woman's love for each other rivals only their affection for the written word. Literature accompanies the murmur of their lives and the harmony of their feelings. Filmmaker Félix Dufour-Laperrière’s imagery parallels Dorion’s words to articulate the familiar cycles of longing, loss, and desire.

The NFB's 45th Oscar®-nominated film.

This short animation is a zany version of the classic fairy tale, with the leading role played by a mistreated, romantic penguin, with hilarious results. Cinderella Penguin loses her magic flipper as she runs to meet her midnight deadline, but all ends well when Prince Charming finds the right webbed foot and the nasty step-family is brought to heel.

This 3D stereoscopic animation tells the story of Matthew, a boy who is never afraid of the dark. Since he's been in darkness all his life, Matthew has eyes where other people only have hands, feet or ears. This week is Matthew's birthday and he's very curious about the surprise his parents are preparing for him. Can he find it?

In this animated short by Sheldon Cohen, young May wants a dog more than anything else in the world. She thinks about dogs all the time; she talks about them, reads about them and covers the walls of her bedroom with dog pictures. But every time she asks her parents for a puppy, they tell her to wait till she's older. But sticking to her motto of "If at first you don’t succeed, try again," May comes up with an ingenious idea to change her parents' minds. Based on the book by Dayal Kaur Khalsa.

This animated short tells the tale of a vampire forced go out every night to separate children from their heads. The reason? His vain wife wants to replace her wrinkled head with one that is young and pretty. What a horror! Especially since the lady of the house is never satisfied and the heads keep piling up on the floor. How will our reluctant vampire ever get out of this vicious cycle?