The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) has given the go-ahead to 12 new projects ranging from full-length features and short docs to Interactive and Immersive.

Most notable on the docket are a half-dozen feature films, including Baby Boy Cousins, Dear Audrey, Post humains, Projet fantômes, Stolen Time and Unarchived.

Also included in the mix is the medium-length documentary Le travail; the shorts A Motorcycle Saved My Life, Our Maternal Home and Then Sings My Soul – and the interactive/immersive Chomsky Vs. Chomsky and Sérotonine anonyme.

All are currently in production.

The features include director Adrian Wills’ Baby Boy Cousins, a personal exploration of his biological roots (produced by the NFB’s Annette Clarke) and Dear Audrey, director Jeremiah Hayes’ eyewitness account of Martin Duckworth, a man who cares for his ailing wife while helping his autistic daughter maintain the relationship with her mother (produced by Cineflix’s Glen Salzman and Andre Barro, and the NFB’s Annette Clarke).

Post humains is the Jérémie Battaglia and Dominique Leclerc-directed portrait of the cyborg and transhumanist world, produced by the NFB’s Nathalie Cloutier, while Projet fantômes finds director Sophie Bédard Marcotte shadowing the creative process of her neighbour, playwright and director Gabriel Plante, as he works on a play based on the myth of Sisyphus.

In Stolen Time, director Helene Klodawsky chronicles the most daring case of Melissa Miller, a personal injury lawyer in this Ina Fichman and Ariel Nasr co-production representing Intuitive Pictures Inc and the NFB, respectively.

Unarchived, directed by Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok and produced by the NFB’s Teri Snelgrove, tells the story of Laura Cuthbert and her organization, Populous Map, as they divulge diverse, underrepresented and unarchived B.C. histories.

NFB also commissioned medium-length doc, Le travail, directed by Julien Capraro, and produced by Denis McCready out of the NFB’s Canadian Francophonie Studio. The project investigates telecommuting through the COVID-19 crisis.

On the documentary shorts front, NFB greenlit: Lori Lozinski-directed A Motorcycle Saved My Life (produced by Terri Snelgrove); Janine Windolph-directed Our Maternal Home, produced by Jon Montes; and Then Sings My Soul, directed by Susan Rogers and produced by Rohan Fernando.

On the interactive front, NFB commissioned a pair of projects. The first is Chomsky vs. Chomsky: a multi-user, game-based, mixed-reality experience created by Sandra Rodriguez, Cindy Bishop, Michael Burk and Johannes Lemke, Olivier Blais, Etienne Boisvenue and Simon Dagenais, and Johannes Helberger.

The organization also greenlit Sérotonine anonyme: an interactive animated short of a young woman broadcasting her cerebral activity during a virtual care session with commentary. The project is written and directed by Caroline Robert.

The NFB says it has been producing projects under its health guidelines and protocols for the COVID-19 pandemic, introduced last summer in collaboration with the Documentary Organization of Canada.