December 19, 2023 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

The National Film Board of Canada will be among the contenders for top awards at this year’s year’s Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, with three powerful films that were selected from more than 9,400 submissions. Romane Garant Chartrand’s documentary Après-coups (Afterwards) will have its international premiere in the International Competition. The animated short Miserable Miracle by Ryo Orikasa, a Miyu Productions/NFB/New Deer co-production, will screen in the Lab Competition, and the animated documentary Boat People will be presented in the Young Audience Competition. The renowned festival will be held from February 2 to 10, 2024. It is the largest event of its kind dedicated to short films.

Quick Facts

International Competition

Après-coups (Afterwards) by Romane Garant Chartrand (24 min 51 s) – INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE
Producer: Nathalie Cloutier for the NFB’s Eastern Canada and Canadian Francophonie Documentary Studios
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/afterwards

• Inside a shelter, women come together and speak out against the violence they have endured, as a way to retake control of their lives. Powerfully empathetic, Après-coups (Afterwards) creates a space of sisterhood and solidarity—a chorus of voices breaking down the walls of silence.
• The film had its world premiere at the Rencontres internationales du documentaire de Montréal (RIDM) and will be streaming in Canada on ca as of February 12, 2024.
• Filmmaker Romane Garant Chartrand’s graduation film, Love-moi(2021), was selected to screen at about 20 festivals and won the Coup de cœur du jury Award at the Plein(s) Écran(s) festival.
• Alongside the director, associate producer Laurie Pominville was selected to produce this film as part of the NFB’s Repêchage initiative for emerging cinema professionals, in collaboration with UQAM.

Lab Competition

Miserable Miracle by Ryo Orikasa (8 min)
Produced by Emmanuel-Alain Raynal and Pierre Baussaron for Miyu Productions; Jelena Popović, Robert McLaughlin and Michael Fukushima for the NFB; Nobuaki Doi for New Deer; with the support of CNC & the Ciclic Animation Residency.
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/miserable-miracle

• Miserable Miracle was inspired by Henri Michaux’s book of poetry and drawings of the same name. Masterful in both vision and execution, the film explores the limits of language and perception, creating dazzling connections between sound, meaning, shapes and movement. Propelling viewers beyond the page, guided by Denis Lavant’s feverish voiceover in French, the poems map the human psyche to the very edges of alienation and transcendence.
• The film has already had a successful festival run, notably in Canada with selections at the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF), where it took the Grand Prize for Short Animation, the Atlantic International Film Festival in Halifax, the Spark Animation Festival in Vancouver and the Whistler Festival.
• Canadian talent worked on the sound design (Sacha Ratcliffe and Pierre Yves Drapeau) and music composition (Sacha Ratcliffe).
• Born in Ibaraki, Japan, and now based in Tokyo, Ryo Orikasa first came to prominence in 2015 with Datum Point, winner of the Golden Zagreb at Animafest Zagreb and Best Experimental or Abstract Animation Award at OIAF.

Young Audience Competition

Boat People by Thao Lam and Kjell Boersma (10 min)
Producers: Justine Pimlott for the NFB’s Central Canada Studios and Jelena Popović for the NFB’s English Program Animation & Interactive Studio
Press kit: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/boat-people-2

• Co-directed by Thao Lam and Kjell Boersma, Boat People is an animated documentary that uses a striking metaphor to trace one family’s flight across the turbulent waters of
• Boat People employs a hybrid of traditional 2D animation, stop-motion multiplane, and 3D rendering to capture the unique aesthetic of Lam’s handmade paper textures and patterns.
• After its world premiere at the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, the film has won 7 awards to date including, recently, the Helen Hill Award for Animated Short Film and the Audience Award for Animated Short Film at the New Orleans Film Festival.
• Thao Lam, who is also a children’s book author and illustrator, wrote and illustrated an award-winning book on the same subject, The Paper Boat. Kjell Boersma is a writer, director and animator whose projects combine traditional and digital animation techniques in novel ways.

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French version here | Version en français ici.