Short Film (Animated): I Met The Walrus, Madame Tutli-Putli, Even Pigeons Go To Heaven, My Love, Peter & The Wolf

The haunting 17-minute National Film Board flick Madame Tutli-Putli by young Montreal filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski follows a solitary woman’s night-train adventure as she confronts the surreal demons of her own imagination.

Like its fellow Canadian Oscar contender I Met the Walrus, Tutli-Putli has been lauded on the festival circuit for its imaginative techniques – in this case a stop-motion approach incorporating puppets handmade of silicone, paint and latex.

The film nabbed both best short film and the Petit Rail d’Or audience award at the Cannes Film Festival, as well as the $5,000 best animated film prize back home at the Worldwide Short Film Festival, which also brought with it Oscar eligibility.

Making the film was a painstaking communal effort, Lavis told Playback on the phone from the Sundance Film Festival.

‘This project was like climbing a mountain,’ he recalled. ‘We were using an experimental process which took a great deal of time. Many people worked on it who didn’t get paid. And I’m sure they hoped they weren’t wasting their time. I guess [the Oscar nomination] is a bit of a vindication.’

The film is produced by the NFB’s Marcy Page, whose extraordinary track record also includes coproducing Oscar winners Ryan, which took the prize in 2005, and The Danish Poet, the reigning champion. It is the NFB’s 70th Oscar nom; the film board has won in the animated short category six times.

NFB film commissioner Tom Perlmutter admits to being ecstatic over this latest success. ‘This work will go down in the history books of animation,’ he effuses. ‘It’s thrilling to get the nomination, but the real thrill is when you see a work like this for the first time and you think. ‘Wow, this is taking us someplace else.”