NFB announces three-year plan to redefine its relationship with Indigenous peoples. Key commitments include: 4 percent of NFB workforce to identify as Indigenous by 2025; Indigenous-led production to represent a minimum of 15 percent of overall production spending; and the creation of protocols/guidelines for production and distribution and use of archives.

The National Film Board of Canada has announced a three-year plan outlining a series of commitments that respond to the work and recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) and Indigenous creators’ longstanding concerns about systemic inequities in the existing Canadian production landscape.

NFB/Bonobostudio short Hedgehog’s Home by Eva Cvijanović receives Young Audiences Award at Annecy festival.

Hedgehog’s Home, directed by Montreal-based Eva Cvijanović and co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada and Bonobostudio, received the Young Audiences Award at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival’s special awards ceremony on June 16. This year marks the fourth time the special awards were presented at the city’s town hall with Jean-Luc Rigaut, mayor of Annecy, in attendance. A second awards ceremony will be held on June 17, the festival’s closing day.

Comic Strip Chronicles, a quartet of NFB shorts created by cartoonists, gets world premiere at Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Cartoonists Guy Delisle and Lewis Trondheim in attendance for official launch.

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) will be making the most of its time at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival with the launch of Comic Strip Chronicles, a quartet of whimsical shorts co-produced with Canal+ and Sacrebleu Productions that celebrates the close affinity between comic books and animated films.

The NFB at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Four films in official competition, the launch of a collection of shorts, an immersive virtual-reality experience, a retrospective, and four films selected for special screenings. NFB press conference on June 14.

From June 12 to 17, the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) will have its sights set on the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, where it will be presenting a remarkable crop of Canadian works and international co-productions. They include four films in official competition, the world premiere of a collection of animated short films, a virtual-reality experience, a retrospective on Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, and four films selected for special screenings. The NFB will be holding a press conference in Annecy to mark the occasion, on June 14 at 10:30 a.m.

Deadline for applications is July 14. NFB puts out call for short documentary ideas by emerging creators with Doc Lab Saskatchewan. Three winning finalists—from Saskatoon, Regina and rural Saskatchewan—will work with NFB producers and mentors to make their own short docs this fall.

The National Film Board of Canada is reaching out to film and digital creators across Saskatchewan with an interest in short documentary storytelling with a call for submissions for Doc Lab Saskatchewan (#DocLabSK). Coming this fall, this new NFB emerging filmmaker program for short non-fiction was announced May 26 at the Yorkton Film Festival.

A partnership between the NFB and Pointe-à-Callière. Philippe Baylaucq’s immersive Un jour sur le pont Franchère re-creates the rhythms of a typical day in the early 19th century.

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) and the Pointe-à-Callière Montréal Archaeology and History Complex are pleased to be launching a new immersive experience today called Un jour sur le pont Franchère (A Day on the Franchère Bridge). Conceived and directed by Philippe Baylaucq, with contributions from animation filmmaker Claude Cloutier, creative producer Jean-Marie Comeau, and NFB executive producer René Chénier, this hybrid work will be presented over the next decade in Pointe-à-Callière and is launching as part of the inauguration of the Fort de Ville-Marie – Pavillon Québecor, a heritage legacy celebrating Montreal’s 375th anniversary.

Attiya Khan and Lawrence Jackman’s powerful documentary A Better Man screens June 9–21 at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. Intervention Productions/NFB feature chronicles a remarkable journey of healing for both a survivor of abuse and her former abuser.

After selling out multiple screenings and igniting crucial discussion about gender-based violence and restorative justice at this year’s Hot Docs festival, Attiya Khan and Lawrence Jackman’s feature documentary A Better Man (Intervention Productions/National Film Board of Canada) returns with a theatrical engagement at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema, June 9–21. Khan and Jackman will attend three Q&As during the film’s opening weekend, on Friday, June 9, at 6:30 p.m., Saturday, June 10, at 6:30 p.m. and Sunday, June 11, at 8:45 p.m. (See complete schedule below or visit the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema website.)

Karim Ben Khelifa’s The Enemy has world premiere in Paris on May 18, followed by international tour with stops in Boston (MIT) and Montreal.

With The Enemy, internationally acclaimed photojournalist Karim Ben Khelifa steps up his quest to change people’s attitudes toward armed conflicts, violence, and the suffering they produce. This virtual-reality experience puts a human face on armed fighters, dropping audiences squarely into the combat zones of long-standing conflicts. The Enemy will have its world premiere at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris, from May 18 to June 4, followed by its North American premiere in Boston (October to December 2017) and its Canadian premiere in Montreal (winter 2018). Ben Khelifa will also go on a Canadian media tour, and the project’s augmented- and mixed-reality app will be accessible worldwide starting in summer 2017. The international co-production uses unprecedented, powerful encounters with combatants from opposing camps to show that both sides are in fact more alike than different. The Enemy is co-produced by Camera Lucida Productions, France Télévisions, the NFB, Dpt. and Emissive.