If pressed to describe Edison and Leo, Tim Burton-meets-the-NFB comes to mind, but of course this truly unique stop-motion animated horror film is 100% Canadian, making it ideal to launch the Canuck showcase — Canada First! — on TIFF’s opening night.

Director Neil Burns was on hand Thursday night at Toronto’s Varsity theater with producers Dean English and Karen Powell, puppeteers, a host of creators and writer George Toles to introduce the film and field questions during a lively Q&A after the packed screening.

Asked if any of this surreal horror show — about a fictitious inventor at the time of the discovery of electricity — was ‘true’ Toles explains: ‘George Edison [the name of the lead character] is my father and he died of a heart attack after eating blueberry pie. There’s a steel version of my mother in the attic, and my first dog was made of metal.’

Toles also he says he avoided ‘donut-hole protagonists’ because ‘my father had absolute confidence; no weaknesses…always right — he never changed his mind on anything so there was no remote chance of him apologizing. By my 10th birthday, he knew the difference between me and my brother.’

This description provides but a glimpse of the world’s most dysfunctional puppet family, where salvation is found in native princess powwows with script zingers such as: ‘When it comes to people, you can’t invent a solution for every problem,’ even though there’s a clearly marked bottle of ‘short term knock-out drops’ always at hand.

Then of course there’s the ‘book of light’ which grants wishes, and an unforgettable cure that involves drinking a bowl of spit (to uncover the truth) or drinking a bowl of tears (once ready for the ‘painful truth’).

Edison and Leo touches on a number of electrical subjects including independence from men, where the line ‘Discontent is the necessity of progress’ got a roar from the audience.’

When asked after the screening why he spent 10 years putting together the $10-million budget required to produce Edison and Leo, English replied: ‘Because I wanted to see it.’

As a ‘member’ of the global film festival circuit, English also jokes: ‘Now I’m the one at a festival with a film that took 10 years to make, and I wonder ‘How I’d become that guy’.’

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Watch for Playback Daily‘s extended coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival in our special weekend editions, Sept. 6 and 7!