NFB's The Girl Who Cried Pearls To Screen At TIFF
As we head further into the second half of the year we arrive in festival season. Although film and animation festivals occur throughout the year, the majority seem to take place through these later months. One of the most prominent of them all is the Toronto International Film Festival also known as TIFF. The National Film Board Of Canada (NFB) have announced that this year's 50th edition of TIFF will host the North American Premiere of the NFB short The Girl Who Cried Pearls.
The film is the latest stop-motion short from Oscar-nominated duo Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, and will screen as part of the Short Cuts selection. The Girl Who Cried Pearls is a timeless parable of desire, deception and the price of innocence. The painstakingly created film features handmade puppets, narration made by renowned screen actor Colm Feore, and a score written by Polaris Music Prize winner Patrick Watson.
Also, as previously announced Min Sook Lee’s Toronto-produced NFB feature documentary There Are No Words will be receiving its world premiere at this year's TIFF.
NFB describes the short: "The Girl Who Cried Pearls is a haunting fable about a girl overwhelmed by sorrow, the boy who loves her, and how greed leads good hearts to wicked deeds.
At the dawn of the 20th century, a poor boy in Montreal falls in love with a girl whose sorrow turns into pearls. He sells them to a ruthless pawnbroker, who hungers for more. Tempted by greed, the boy must choose between love and fortune—and the choice could damn his soul."
As well as the talents of Feore and Watson, The Girl Who Cried Pearls features sound design by Olivier Calvert, sound designer on the NFB Oscar-nominated shorts Affairs of the Art, Blind Vaysha and Animal Behaviour, and part of Sylvain Bellemare’s Oscar-winning team on Denis Villeneuve’s live-action sci-fi flick Arrival. The film had its world premiere as part of the opening night at the 2025 edition of the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
The film is produced for the NFB by Julie Roy, Marc Bertrand and Christine Noël, with Brigitte Henry as artistic director.
Lavis and Szczerbowski (Clyde Henry Productions) are award-winning animators, writers and directors whose work is known for dark humour, surreal details and evocative artistry as they explore the strange beauty of life. Their first short film Madame Tutli-Putli earned them an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short in addition to 45 other awards and nominations.
Their other NFB credits include Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life, a Maurice Sendak adaptation featuring Meryl Streep, art direction for Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room, and the VR stop-motion experience Gymnasia, winner of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Immersive Experience.
Most recently, they collaborated with Montreal's Compulsion Games and Xbox to direct an introductory sequence for the game South Of Midnight.
Lavis and Szczerbowski are to be honoured at this year's Ottawa International Animation Festival. They have also been recognised with retrospectives at Annecy and the Cinémathèque Québécoise in Montreal.
For more information on the short film see here.
