ASIFA-Hollywood’s Annie Awards nominate NFB short The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Montreal animation duo Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski
PRESS RELEASE
05/01/2026
January 5, 2026 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski has been nominated for Best Short Subject at Hollywood’s Annie Awards.
It’s the latest honour for this haunting stop-motion fable, which is one of 15 films shortlisted for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.
The Montreal-based animation duo of Lavis and Szczerbowski first captured global attention with their 2007 NFB short Madame Tutli-Putli, which received 45 awards and honours, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short.
This is their sixth collaboration with the NFB—a remarkable creative partnership spanning two decades that’s explored in a new NFB Blog post.
The Girl Who Cried Pearls is now streaming free on NFB.ca, YouTube and all NFB apps in Canada. It will also be featured at New York City’s Animation First Festival, taking place February 5 to 8, 2026.
Presented by ASIFA-Hollywood, the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, the 53rd Annie Awards will take place on Saturday, February 21, 2026 at UCLA’s Royce Hall in Los Angeles.
Quick facts
The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (17 min 28 s)
Produced by Julie Roy, Marc Bertrand and Christine Noël
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/the-girl-who-cried-pearls
- A celebration of the magic of stop-motion animation, The Girl Who Cried Pearls is a meticulously crafted fable about a girl overwhelmed by sorrow, the boy who loves her, and how greed leads good hearts to wicked deeds.
- The film features a star-studded creative team, including Colm Feore (voice), Patrick Watson (music) and Brigitte Henry as artistic director. Sound design is by Olivier Calvert, who was on Sylvain Bellemare’s team for the Denis Villeneuve film Arrival, winner of the 2017 Oscar for Sound Editing.
- Since its debut in June 2025 at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it was featured as an opening film and in official competition, The Girl Who Cried Pearls has screened at more than 30 festivals and won 10 awards and mentions.
About the filmmakers
- Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (Clyde Henry Productions) are award-winning writers, directors and animators. Rich in surreal detail, dark humour and evocative artistry, their work explores the mystery and strange beauty of life.
- Along with Madame Tutli-Putli, their acclaimed NFB credits include Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (NFB/Warner Brothers, 2010), a Maurice Sendak adaptation featuring Meryl Streep; art direction for Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room (Buffalo Gal Pictures/Phi/NFB, 2015), recognized with a Canadian Screen Award nomination; and the VR stop-motion work Gymnasia (Felix & Paul/NFB, 2019), winner of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Immersive Experience.
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French version here.
Media Relations
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About the NFB
For more than 80 years, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has produced, distributed and preserved those stories, which now form a vast audiovisual collection—an important part of our cultural heritage that represents all Canadians.
To tell these stories, the NFB works with filmmakers of all ages and backgrounds, from across the country. It harnesses their creativity to produce relevant and groundbreaking content for curious, engaged and diverse audiences. The NFB also collaborates with industry experts to foster innovation in every aspect of storytelling, from formats to distribution models.
Every year, another 50 or so powerful new animated and documentary films are added to the NFB’s extensive collection of more than 14,000 titles, half of which are available to watch for free on nfb.ca.
Through its mandate, its stature and its productions, the NFB contributes to Canada’s cultural identity and is helping to build the Canada of tomorrow.