NFB feature-length doc and two animated shorts at TIFF 2024
World premieres of Halima Elkhatabi’s debut feature Living Together and Amanda Strong’s animated short Inkwo for When the Starving Return—plus the North American debut of Oscar-winning animator Torill Kove’s short Maybe Elephants
The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) selection at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), taking place September 5 to 15, will feature captivating explorations of identity and powerful storytelling, with a new NFB feature documentary and two NFB co-produced animated shorts.
TIFF Docs
- WORLD PREMIERE: Young people looking for the ideal roommate open up about themselves in Halima Elkhatabi’s debut feature doc Living Together. In scenes filmed in 15 Montreal apartments, Elkhatabi paints a complex and engaging picture of a generation accustomed to playing all their identity cards to find their place in the world. Living Together is one of two films by the Montreal director selected for TIFF 2024.
Short Cuts
- WORLD PREMIERE: In Michif/Métis creator Amanda Strong’s Spotted Fawn Productions/NFB co-pro Inkwo for When the Starving Return, Dove, a warrior and land defender, uses Indigenous medicine (Inkwo) to protect their community from a swarm of terrifying creatures. An animated adaptation of a story by Richard Van Camp, the film features the voice talents of Paulina Alexis, Tantoo Cardinal and Art Napoleon.
- NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE: Maybe Elephants is a playful and loving autobiographical film by Montreal-based animator Torill Kove, co-produced by Mikrofilm (Norway) and the NFB. Winner of the Academy Award for The Danish Poet, Torill narrates the story of her formative teenage years when her parents and sisters swap a safe and predictable life in Norway with the fresh unknowns of vibrant 1970s Nairobi, Kenya.
Living Together (original French title: Cohabiter) by Halima Elkhatabi (75 min), Quebec (Canada)
Producer: Nathalie Cloutier
The debut feature-length documentary by a filmmaker with a compassionate eye, Living Together maps a contemporary mosaic of cultures and ideas, with explorations of community, individualism and the housing crisis in constant interplay.
- Fifty-two people were filmed to create Living Together, featuring a diverse wealth of multicultural, multiethnic, multigenerational and multigender encounters. It’s a vivid portrait of modern-day Montreal—and contemporary life in any big city.
- Born in France, Halima Elkhatabi is a Montreal writer and director of Moroccan descent. A graduate of the Institut national de l’image et du son, Elkhatabi works in documentary and fiction film, as well as audio documentary production. She was a co-director of the NFB collaborative doc St-Henri, the 26th of August, directed the short fiction film Nina (Canada’s Top Ten at TIFF in 2015) and authored the podcasts La route du bled, Chloé et Abdi, Songe d’une nuit d’hiver and La route de l’Eldorado.
- Elkhatabi is truly making a name for herself at TIFF 2024. She has another film at TIFF this year: the narrative short Fantas.
Inkwo for When the Starving Return by Amanda Strong (Spotted Fawn Productions/NFB, 18 min 27 s)
Producers: Amanda Strong (Spotted Fawn Productions), Maral Mohammadian (NFB), Nina Werewka (Spotted Fawn Productions)
Two lifetimes from now the world hangs in the balance. Dove, a young warrior, receives and begins to understand the gifts and burdens of their Inkwo (medicine) to defend against an army of starving creatures.
- Dove’s courage, resilience and alliance with the Earth culminates in a battle against these flesh-consuming monsters, who become stronger with each human they devour. Inkwo for When the Starving Return is a call to action to fight and protect against the forces of greed and consumption.
- The film is an animated adaptation of the short story “Wheetago War” by award-winning Tlicho Dene storyteller Richard Van Camp, published in his collection Night Moves. “Wheetago War” was inspired by Art Napoleon’s interview with his late grandmother Suzette Napoleon, published in Bushland Spirit: Our Elders Speak.
- Inkwo features the voice talents of Paulina Alexis (Critics Choice Award winner), Tantoo Cardinal (Order of Canada) and versatile television producer, actor and storyteller Art Napoleon.
- Amanda Strong is a Michif/Métis artist, writer, producer, director, filmmaker and mother. As the owner and executive producer of Spotted Fawn Productions Inc., her collaborative creations serve to amplify Indigenous storytelling and ideologies. Strong’s work has received Canadian Screen Award and Emmy nominations, and her films—which include Biidaaban and Four Faces of the Moon—have been shown worldwide at venues such as TIFF, the Cannes film market, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the American Museum of Natural History.
Maybe Elephants by Torill Kove (Mikrofilm/NFB, 16 min 43 s)
Producers: Lise Fearnley (Mikrofilm), Maral Mohammadian (NFB), Tonje Skar Reiersen (Mikrofilm)
- In the ’70s, three rebellious teenage daughters, a restless mother, a father struggling with potatoes, and maybe some elephants, find themselves in bustling Nairobi—and the family will never be the same.
- Narrated by Torill Kove, Maybe Elephants features the return cast of her Oscar-nominated short Me and My Moulton. The film wraps rich nostalgia around memories of eventful family trips, timeless teen antics and those inevitable moments of adolescent epiphany—bursting with wit, a joyful colour palette and an energetic soundscape.
- Maybe Elephants was made with the collaboration of several Kenyan Canadians who played the roles of Kenyan characters and with whom Kove consulted on Swahili language and Kenyan culture.
- Torill Kove is a Norwegian-born filmmaker and animator living in Canada. Three of her films (including My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts and Me and My Moulton) have been nominated for Academy Awards, with The Danish Poet, narrated by Liv Ullmann, winning the coveted golden statue in 2007. Kove’s films are known for her expressive designs and playful and poignant autobiographical themes.
