Canada Vignettes: Bridging the Gap

NiNoKuni(ja)

Adapted from the video game series of the same name, NiNoKuni follows high school peers Yuu and Haru who must travel between two separate yet parallel worlds to help save their childhood friend, Kotona, whose life is in danger. In this magical quest complicated by love, the three teens will be tasked with making the ultimate choice.

Orgesticulanismus(en)

Animator Mathieu Labaye's tribute to his father, who suffered from multiple sclerosis and was confined to a wheelchair.

Transformation(ar)

During an ongoing devastating war, a disabled young orphan tries to put an end to his pain. All of a sudden, paranormal activity shakes the world he lives in.

Imagination(en)

A paper cut-out stop-motion animation where the protagonist visits an exhibition of Matisse-inspired paper cuts in her pink wheelchair and is transported from the reality of the dull grey world outside into the colourful world of her imagination.

This Boy Suffers from Crystallization(ja)

The story revolves around high school boy Ayumu Tamari, who has an illness that makes him start to turn to stone when he's stressed. Since he couldn't fit in with his class, after repeating a year, he declared that he wanted to have a "Sparkly youth" as well. To do this, he changed his hair and clothes to be more fashionable, and constantly checked for popular topics to stay in the know. In the midst of Ayumu's life of making a facade, his homeroom teacher and stone-loving geology teacher Kouya Onihara says that Ayumu's stone transformation is beautiful. Ayumu begins to become attracted to Kouya, who starts to give him advice.

Limbo(he)

On the verge of losing the last thread of sight he has left, Adam tries to process his loss.

Carlotta's Face(de)

We all share the same kind of brain yet everybody has a different view of the world around us. As a very intriguing example, Carlotta vividly explains how a world without faces does look like. She suffers from the miswiring of a tiny brain region that makes it impossible for her to see and remember faces as a complete construct, called prosopagnosia or face blindness.

Lo specchio di Lorenzo(it)

Josee, the Tiger and the Fish(ja)

With dreams of diving abroad, Tsuneo gets a job assisting Josee, an artist whose imagination takes her far beyond her wheelchair. But when the tide turns against them, they push each other to places they never thought possible, and inspire a love fit for a storybook.

I Want to Win 5th Prize(ja)

This is a story of a girl born with a bad leg. Ritsuko longs to go to school and make lots of friends, but this proves as not so easy. Her mother is very protective of her, and she is teased by her classmates, because of her disability. Will she manage to keep her smile?

Horned Cook, Gola(en)

A four armed chef goes about his day.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: The Movie 2nd A's(ja)

Six months after the events of Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha: The Movie 1st, Fate has returned to Uminari City with Lindy as her legal guardian and is living the life of a normal elementary schoolgirl along with Nanoha and her friends. The reunion between the two new-found friends is cut short, however, when they are assaulted by four ancient magic users who identify themselves as the Wolkenritter. As the motives behind the actions of the Wolkenritter become clear, Nanoha and Fate find themselves in a race against time to stop the reactivation of a highly dangerous artifact known as the Book of Darkness.

Daisy's Final Goodbye(en)

"Daisy's Final Goodbye" is an evocative animated tale based on a true story. It chronicles the heart-wrenching journey of Steven, a PTSD-afflicted veteran, as he grapples with the profound loss of his devoted service dog, Daisy. The weight of this farewell is almost unbearable. As a poignant homage, filmmaker Steven Long crafts this narrative five years after Daisy's departure, celebrating not just her unwavering bond, but also honoring the countless canines who've embraced us as kin.

What It Feels Like(en)

This flipbook-style animation demonstrates the emotions of people who hear voices

Awaker(sk)

At a time where there were no alarm-clocks, an old men worked as an awaker. Every day he walked the long way from his house to the village until he gets an old shiny bell.

The Penguin Who Couldn’t Swim(en)

An animation about a disabled penguin who lives on a rocky island in the southern seas where she feels isolated from the rest of her colony. She is inventive, resourceful and tough but frustrated about what she cannot do.

All for Claire(en)

Lee is a young man determined to win the heart of Claire, a young woman determined to make life difficult for him. Dancing playfully on her crutches, Claire frustrates Lee’s romantic advances, transporting him away to daunting environments where he’ll need to think on his feet if he’s to win her affections. Director Simon McKeown worked with actor Lee Soar and choreographer Claire Cunningham to create this colourful motion-capture animation which was first broadcast on BBC Big Screens across Britain in 2010. Mckeown explores themes of power, control and rejection in the work and originally created two versions with different endings for festival audiences to choose from – ‘win’ or ‘lose’?

Freaks(en)

A circus' beautiful trapeze artist agrees to marry the leader of side-show performers, but his deformed friends discover she is only marrying him for his inheritance.

Rain Man(en)

When car dealer Charlie Babbitt learns that his estranged father has died, he returns home to Cincinnati, where he discovers that he has a savant older brother named Raymond and that his father's $3 million fortune is being left to the mental institution in which Raymond lives. Motivated by his father's money, Charlie checks Raymond out of the facility in order to return with him to Los Angeles. The brothers' cross-country trip ends up changing both their lives.

Stuck on You(en)

In Martha's Vineyard, Mass., conjoined twins Walt and Bob Tenor make the best of their handicap by being the fastest grill cooks in town. While outgoing Walt hopes to one day become a famous actor, shy Bob prefers to stay out of the spotlight. When a fading Hollywood actress, Cher, decides to get her show "Honey and the Beaze" cancelled, she hires Walt -- and his brotherly appendage -- as her costars. But their addition surprisingly achieves the opposite.