Best of the Decade: NBFF Canadian Shorts Winners

Best of the Decade: NBFF Canadian Shorts Winners

Best of the Decade: Canadian Shorts Winners is a curated showcase of exceptional short films that have earned the Canadian Short Award at the North Bay Film Festival over the past decade. This special 10th Anniversary program reflects the festival’s ongoing commitment to supporting emerging voices and celebrating the creativity, innovation, and spirit of Canadian filmmakers.

From intimate character studies to bold experiments in form and storytelling, these award-winning shorts reveal the diversity of contemporary Canadian cinema. Each film captures a distinct perspective — exploring identity, place, connection, and imagination through the concise yet powerful lens of the short format.

Award Winners invites audiences to revisit standout works that have defined the festival’s history and inspired future filmmakers. Together, these films remind us that big ideas often thrive in small stories — and that the short film form remains one of the most vital and inventive spaces in cinema today.

Shorts Featured:

Kubo’s Crickets

16 mins
Canada, 2016
Dir. Michael Allcock
Language: English

Obsessive visionary/inventor Kubo Dzamba believes he’s found a way to save humanity from a cataclysmic world famine that many scientists say will cripple humanity by 2050. His solution? Farming crickets for food. With the loving support of his offbeat family, Kubo is forced to navigate a minefield of challenges that include malfunctioning equipment, lack of money – and a world not ready to gobble up bugs.

Fix and Release

16 Mins  |  Dir: Scott Dobson  |  2017

Fix and Release explores a small turtle trauma center in Peterborough, Ontario, as it fights to even the odds for survival that freshwater turtles face in the modern world. This visually beautiful films shows turtles in a way that few have seen before.

The Hole in Reservoir Hill

13 Mins  |  Dir: Richard Williamson  |  2018

A timely revisiting of a Cold War-era bunker in North Bay, Ontario, and the individuals who know its secrets.

Waters of March

4 Mins  |  Dir: Elizabeth Lewis  |  2019

Waters of March is the classic written by Tom Jobim and performed by jazz singer Stacey Kent. The delicately rendered animated drawings tell the ever-changing story of loss and hope.

Tsi Teyoto:te (Even In the Silence)

3 Mins 30s  |  Dir: Jonathan Elliot  |  2020

A visual poem told entirely in Kanien’keha (Mohawk language) that examines the impacts of underage drinking in Indigenous communities and the struggle to overcome grief and past traumas through culture and traditional practices.

Rachel, a young Mohawk woman struggles with the aftermath of a terrible drunk-driving incident, forcing her to confront her trauma and mistakes in order to heal.

The Music Video

13 Mins 54s  |  Dir: Camille Poirier  |  2020

In order to be in her older brother’s music video, Clara, a 13-year-old tomboy, agrees to undergo a radical change of style. She soon notices that this transformation changes her brother’s friend’s behaviour towards her. French with English subtitles.

Therefore, Socrates is Mortal (Donc, Socrate est mortel)

12 Mins 34s  |  Dir: Alexandre Isabelle  |  2021

Facing the climate crisis, Louise, a philosophy teacher, turns words into action.

For Roy

10 Mins  |  Dir: Vivian Cheung  |  2022

Inspired by true events, an imaginative Asian-Canadian girl attempts to fold a thousand cranes as she learns to lose her father during his final days in the hospice.

Camping

7 Mins  |  Dir: Sacha Kai Michaud, Alyssa Ashmore, Nicole Calfchild |  2023

Camping is a stop-motion short, that follows the story of Shawna, a young woman living in an urban encampment as she attempts to find housing. This was a community project, written by people with the lived experience of being unhoused.