Canada’s Top Ten Honours Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski’s NFB Stop-Motion Short The Girl Who Cried Pearls

 (Image provided by the NFB)

The Girl Who Cried Pearls is among 15 films shortlisted for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film at the 98th Oscars.

Awards and Festivals

Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film

TIFF - Toronto International Film Festival, Canada (2025)

CFI Award for Best Canadian Animation

Ottawa International Animation Festival, Canada (2025)

Maribor Audience Grand Prix – Stop Motion Animation

StopTrik International Film Festival, Maribor, Slovenia (2025)

Benshi Award & Official Selection – Short Films in Official Competition

Annecy International Animation Film Festival, France (2025)

Special Jury Mention – Mention spéciale du jury meilleur court métrage québécois

Quebec City Film Festival, Canada (2025)

Special Mentions Award

TIAF – Taichung International Animation Festival, Taiwan (2025)

AniB's Choice Award

Bucheon International Animation Festival, South Korea (2025)

Award Winner

Los Angeles Animation Festival (2025)

Jury Special Mention

TOFUZI International Animated Film Festival, Georgia (2025)

Official Selection – Parental Experience section

Giffoni Film Festival, Italy (2025)

Official Selection – International Short Film Competition

Animator International Animated Film Festival, Poznań, Poland (2025)

Official Competition

Off-Courts Trouville – Rencontre France/Québec autour du court métrage, Trouville-sur-Mer, France (2025)

Official Selection

Animation First Festival, New York (2026)

(Image provided by the NFB)

January 6, 2026 – Montreal – National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski has been named to Canada’s Top Ten—a list of the country’s finest feature-length and short films in 2025, as chosen by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).

 

It’s the latest honour for this stop-motion marvel, which received the Short Cuts Award for Best Canadian Short Film at TIFF. Recently nominated for the Annie Award for Best Short Subject by ASIFA-Hollywood, The Girl Who Cried Pearls is also among 15 films shortlisted for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.

 

Nominations for the 98th Oscars will be announced on January 22.

The Montreal duo first captured global attention with their 2007 NFB short Madame Tutli-Putli, which garnered an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short and received 45 awards and honours.

The Girl Who Cried Pearls is streaming free on NFB.ca, YouTube, and all NFB apps in Canada. This is Chris and Maciek’s sixth collaboration with the NFB—a remarkable creative partnership spanning two decades that is the subject of a new NFB Blog post.

 

The film will also be screening in Toronto at TIFF Lightbox 3:

Canada’s Top Ten Shorts Programme 1

Friday, February 6, 2026, at 1 p.m.

 

About the film

The Girl Who Cried Pearls, by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (17 min 28 s)

Producers: Julie Roy, Marc Bertrand, and Christine Noël

Set in Montreal at the dawn of the 20th century, The Girl Who Cried Pearls is a haunting fable about a girl overwhelmed by sorrow, the boy who loves her, and how greed leads good hearts to wicked deeds. This meticulously crafted film is a celebration of the magic of stop-motion animation, and a timeless parable of desire, deception and the price of innocence.

The film features a star-studded creative team, including Colm Feore (voice), Patrick Watson (music) and Brigitte Henry as artistic director. Sound design is by Olivier Calvert, who was on Sylvain Bellemare’s team for the Denis Villeneuve film Arrival, winner of the 2017 Oscar for Sound Editing.

Since its debut in June 2025 at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it was featured as an opening film and in official competition, The Girl Who Cried Pearls has screened at more than 30 festivals and won 10 awards and mentions.

 

About the filmmakers

Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (Clyde Henry Productions) are award-winning writers, directors and animators. Rich in surreal detail, dark humour and evocative artistry, their work explores the mystery and strange beauty of life.

Along with Madame Tutli-Putli, their acclaimed NFB credits include Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More to Life (NFB/Warner, 2010), a Maurice Sendak adaptation featuring Meryl Streep; art direction for Guy Maddin’s The Forbidden Room (Buffalo Gal Pictures/Phi/NFB, 2015), recognized with a Canadian Screen Award nomination; and the VR stop-motion work Gymnasia (Felix & Paul/NFB, 2019), winner of the Canadian Screen Award for Best Immersive Experience.