Karla Baumgardner

Feisty, fiercely independent and firmly rooted in place, 90 year-old Mabel Robinson broke barriers back in the 40s when she became the first woman in Hubbards, Nova Scotia, to launch her own business—a hairdressing salon where she still provides shampoo-n-sets over 70 years later. Weaving animation and archival imagery with intimate and laugh out loud moments in the salon, the film celebrates the power of friendship, doing what you love and staying active. With no desire to retire anytime soon, Mabel gives voice to a generation who are not front and center of cinema or the pop hairstyles of the day, and subtly shifts the lens on our perception of beauty and the elderly.

Inuit artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—14 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the present, past and future of her people in a radiant new light. Diving into the NFB’s vast archive, she parses the complicated cinematic representation of the Inuit, harvesting fleeting truths and fortuitous accidents from a range of sources—newsreels, propaganda, ethnographic docs, and work by Indigenous filmmakers. Embedding historic footage into original animation, she conjures up a vision of hope and beautiful possibility.

A polar bear must try his luck finding a job in the big city when the last of his Arctic ice environment disappears. It’s hard fitting into the human world, however, so this bear finds a more creative solution to his predicament. This film was made as part of the 8th edition of the NFB's Hothouse apprenticeship.

Josh Crooks is a promising teen hockey star in a sport where Black players like him are chronically underrepresented. Ice Breakers reveals the buried history of a pioneering Black hockey league in Atlantic Canada, as Crooks discovers that his unshakable passion is tied to a rich and remarkable heritage.

Knowing Gaze is a loving roast of gay culture. This animated short moves fluidly through a series of interconnected vignettes—from online personas to offline hookups, from the thrift store to the dance floor to the bathhouse. Rendered in expressive brush strokes, the story unfolds as candid conversations carried by acidic dialogue and vulnerable interior monologues. At its core, the film probes the tenderness and tension of modern gay identity. Beneath a million witty one-liners, the soul cries out.

As a child in Vietnam, Thao’s mother often rescued ants from bowls of sugar water. Years later they would return the favour. Boat People is an animated documentary that uses a striking metaphor to trace one family’s flight across the turbulent waters of history.

This animated short tells the story of a ferocious polar bear turned to stone by an Inuk shaman. The tale is based on emerging filmmaker Echo Henoche's favourite legend, as told to her by her grandmother in her home community of Nain, Nunatsiavut, on Labrador's North Coast. Hand-drawn and painted by Henoche in a style all her own, Shaman is the first collaboration between the Labrador artist and the NFB.

The Korean legend of Ungnyeo, a bear reborn as a woman, becomes a percussive and mesmerizing riff on the themes of transformation and quarantine. Produced as part of the 13th edition of the NFB’s Hothouse apprenticeship.