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Binge-Worthy Series
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Sounds & Pressure: Reggae in a Foreign Land2024Sounds & Pressure: Reggae in a Foreign Land follows the journeys of these icons. Through rare archives and infectious beats, this captivating five-part anthology series takes you from Kingston to Kensington Market to see and hear how reggae made roots in Canada against all odds. -
North Star2023Laurie Rousseau-Nepton is a young, Quebec-born Innu astrophysicist who’s leading a massive research project at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. Drawing on a worldview rooted in a love of nature, as well as her talents as a science communicator, she shares her passion for the study of celestial objects. Ranging from Ashuapmushuan to Wendake, Hawaii and Mont-Mégantic, Laurie’s inspiring journey will leave viewers starry-eyed. North Star is directed by Patrick Bossé.
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The Lake Winnipeg Project2021The Lake Winnipeg Projectis a four-part documentary series that calls attention to stories of ingenuity and resilience in four diverse communities surrounding Lake Winnipeg, at a time when many external forces are imposing change. Anishinaabe/Cree director Kevin Settee takes an “own-voices” approach to storytelling that gives Lake Winnipeg communities and peoples the opportunity to tell their own stories and speak to the challenges and successes they experience.
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True North: Inside the Rise of Toronto Basketball2018An intimate look at the rise of five aspiring athletes, Ryan Sidhoo’s nine-part docu-series captures the raw emotion of navigating today’s youth basketball machine.
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The Great List of Everything2019Based on a French-language comic book, The Great List of Everything features artists Cathon and Iris, two wildly imaginative young women who share their unbridled passion for everyday objects. The two friends’ quirky humour, broad knowledge, and endless curiosity will make you want to learn more about these objects. Travel with them through history as they explain the origins of everything from the fishing rod to the refrigerator to the toothbrush. But don’t believe everything you hear! Voiced by Angela Galuppo and Cat Lemieux, both seasons of The Great List of Everything were produced by La Pastèque and the National Film Board of Canada in collaboration with Télé-Québec, and with the financial participation of the Shaw Rocket Fund.
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Magical Caresses2022Magical Caresses is a series of animated documentaries by Lori Malépart-Traversy, creator of the popular short film Le clitoris. A skillful blend of humour and confession, these four-minute episodes provide a range of female perspectives, taking a healthy and uninhibited approach to demystifying masturbation. The series’ source material is adapted from intimate accounts published in the Caresses magiques book series written and edited by Sarah Gagnon-Piché and Sara Hébert. Using the tremendous creative freedom afforded by animation, Malépart-Traversy tells these stories from a new angle, crafting a bold and insightful original series about solo sexuality.
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Gatherings2020A must-see documentary series that offers fresh perspectives and a sensitive, hopeful look at environmental challenges through the eyes of some colourful and inspiring characters.
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Freedom Road2019Freedom Road is a five-part documentary series that tells the inspiring story of Shoal Lake 40 Anishinaabe First Nation and their battle to build a road, after their community was forcibly relocated and cut off from the mainland over 100 years ago, so that water could be diverted to the city of Winnipeg. Director and Shoal Lake 40 member Angelina McLeod uses an innovative, community-driven approach to storytelling that highlights the community’s dignity, strength and perseverance, as they take back control of their narrative and their future in the process of building Freedom Road.
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The Rwanda Series1996In April 1994, the international community sat by and watched while a million Tutsi men, women and children were massacred in the central African nation of Rwanda. The Rwanda Series, featuring Hand of God, Hand of the Devil (1996), the three-part Chronicle of a Genocide Foretold (1996) and Sitting on a Volcano (1996), offers a record of a horrifying crime that could have been prevented by the global community and international law. These important films follow several Rwandans before, during and after the genocide.
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Le son des Français d'Amérique (English Version)1976Francophone culture in North America is largely rooted in music, songs and folk dances passed on from generation to generation. And there is a connection between the vibrancy of these traditions and their minority status, since French-speaking communities have been able to preserve their identities and fend off assimilation in part by holding on to their folk traditions. The development of francophone communities in the New World is better traced through their music—so intimately linked to daily life, work and events—than through history books. The films in this series pursue a goal, shared by many Quebec filmmakers, to shine a spotlight on a people whose voice and right to “memory” had been stripped away. In offering those who did not generally have access to public forums a place to speak, direct cinema developed an original discourse that ran counter to official statements from politicians, historians and academics—in short, those who tended to monopolize the usual channels of communication. In this sense, this series does not seek to perpetuate the myth of a French North America that disappeared in the mid-18th century, a myth maintained by US, English-Canadian and French historians. Rather, through sound and music, it depicts the ongoing presence of four French Peoples in North America: Quebecers, Acadians, Métis and Créoles. The originality of the North American French “sound” draws upon both French and Celtic influences. To better understand its roots, five of the films were shot in Vendée, Poitou; in Upper and Lower Brittany; and in Ireland. The 27 films in the series have clear archival value, but they also bear witness to a North America that would not be the same without its francophone influence. The filmmakers, André Gladu and Michel Brault, wanted to use francophone musical traditions to demonstrate how francophones contributed to building the North America we know today.
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On the Spot1950The first NFB series made specifically for television, On the Spot consisted of 15-minute documentary reports (which later ran 30 minutes) on different aspects of life in Canada.
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Comic Strip Chronicles2017Discover the creativity and wit of cartoonists-turned-filmmakers in our Comic Strip Chronicles, a collection of shorts that celebrates the strong affinity between two art forms: the comic strip and the animated film.
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FIVE@502019In 1969, Canada passed Bill C-150 into law, which partially decriminalized homosexuality in Canada. Fifty years later, the NFB presents Five@50, a unique collection of five-minute shorts reflecting on contemporary LGBTQ2+ lives and identities. These intimate documentaries range from personal reflection to cultural history, and include experimental forms, animation and dramatization. When it comes to progress and queer culture, what have we gained? And what have we lost along the way?
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Labrador Doc Project2021The Labrador Documentary Project (Lab Doc Project) supports Indigenous storytelling by working with first-time Labrador Inuit filmmakers to create and distribute Inuit stories from Inuit perspectives. The Lab Doc Project is led by Inuit through community collaboration, and focuses on topics selected by the filmmakers through a process of reflection and community engagement. This initiative aims to elevate Indigenous storytelling in Newfoundland and Labrador, create film opportunities for Inuit, and proactively diversify our industry. There are four films in this Project, with two launching in 2021, and the remaining films launching in 2023.
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Five Feminist Minutes 20192019In 1990, the NFB made waves with Five Feminist Minutes , a series of short films produced by the trailblazing Studio D, the world’s first all-woman production unit. When the NFB celebrated its 80th anniversary in 2019, four contemporary directors picked up the thread.
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Urban.Indigenous.Proud2018Urban.Indigenous.Proud is a film project partnership between the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres and the National Film Board of Canada. Taking a community-driven approach, the OFIFC and the NFB produced five short documentaries by Indigenous filmmakers who set out to explore urban Indigenous culture and lived experiences in five Friendship Centre communities.
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Alambic2022The Alambic collection invites you to experience the unique and stunning vision of a group of emerging filmmakers, in a series of films each under three minutes long. Alambic is an experimental creative lab offering early-career artists the opportunity to craft original visual stories in the space of a few months. An initiative of the NFB’s French Animation Studio, Alambic puts out an annual call for emerging creators who want to participate in this unique experience.
