Bread Will Walk has been selected for this year’s Directors’ Fortnight in Cannes!

Link to the press release

A National Film Board of Canada production

A devoted sister races to save her brother, a bread-turned zombie. A mob of hungry living pursues, mouths agape. Streets twist into mazes, reason crumbles. Can love defy appetite?

The planet is starving, but a corporation called The Mill has the solution: miracle bread. Except it turns people who eat it into fresh loaves of walking bread. A devoted sister tries to save her little bread-brother, who’s being pursued by a hungry mob through twisted streets. Hunger reigns, reason crumbles. In a world that wants to eat you alive, can love defy appetite?

The animated short Bread Will Walk is a relentless fever dream of fear and loafing. With darkly delicious humour, this surreal chase unfolds in a constant morph of hand-drawn chaos—raw, like a napkin sketch, mirroring a world unravelling under the weight of society’s paranoia.

Masterfully baked by Alex Boya (Turbine), with all characters twitchily voiced by Jay Baruchel, this frenetic fresco of satire skewers the hypocrisies of corporate propaganda and its incessant kneading of a stale society into devouring whatever it’s fed—literally.

To create Bread Will Walk, Alex Boya spent four years meticulously “kneading” the film’s animation and storytelling. Starting with more than 4,000 hand-drawn ink-on-paper frames, he explored stop-motion with real bread and digital techniques like Unity and VR but returned to a 2D process. Each drawing was scanned, segmented and enhanced with photo-collage textures. AI-assisted tools were tested but ultimately abandoned to preserve the film’s dream-like, hand-made essence. In the final pass, Photoshop layering and a “pastry glaze” filter in After Effects unified the visuals. Boya’s continuous-shot vision captures a breathless, surreal fresco where love challenges collective madness.

→ Read Bread Will Walk: The “Baking-Of” to get a taste of the unique recipe.

NUTRITION FACTS

Per viewing (% of Daily Dose)

Carbohydrate: 16%

Humour: 39%

Adrenaline: 37%

Weirdness: 59%

Sodium: 3%

INGREDIENTS: Engineered flour, Kafkaesque despair, Irony, Hand-drawings, Technological experimentation, Dystopian present, Monty Python wackiness, High-fructose Jay Baruchel syrup, Yeast, Love, Hansel & Gretel references, Boya’s secret spices.

CONTAINS: Gluten.

MAY CONTAIN: Zombies.

Made in Canada.

Why did you want to tell this story? What was the starting point?

Bread Will Walk was born of a reflection on overconsumption and dehumanization. By subverting the symbolism of bread, I imagined a parable in which a basic food becomes propaganda, and where love tries to defy appetite.

How did the artistic direction and the creation of the film’s visual universe come together?

The visual world blends 2D animation, digital collages and a dreamlike palette. Each narrative layer —zombification, the food museum, the crumb-covered thug—builds an absurd and poetic atmosphere, where the grotesque brushes against devotion.

What challenges did you face during the making of this film? How did you overcome them?

The main challenge was to make the brother’s transformation into a half-man, half-bread creature believable, without losing the emotional core. Through visual experimentation and close team synergy, we sculpted a figure that is strange, moving and universal.

How does this work fit into your cinematic journey?

This film continues my exploration of surreal narratives that question the contemporary world. After Turbine, I keep crossing the boundaries between reality and imagination, now with touches of social satire and apocalyptic tenderness.

What would you like the audience to take away from the film?

That our survival instincts can devour what’s left of our humanity. Bread Will Walk asks a simple, brutal question: In a starving world, how far can love go? And who eats whom?

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