The Big Lemming

A young shaman must face her first test: a trip underground to visit Kannaaluk, The One Below, who holds the answers to why a community member has become ill.

When an impulsive boy named Kenai is magically transformed into a bear, he must literally walk in another's footsteps until he learns some valuable life lessons. His courageous and often zany journey introduces him to a forest full of wildlife, including the lovable bear cub Koda, hilarious moose Rutt and Tuke, woolly mammoths and rambunctious rams.

A lonely fisherman drifts into haunted waters in search of food and finds much more than he bargained for. Based on an Inuit folktale.

Inuit artist Asinnajaq plunges us into a sublime imaginary universe—14 minutes of luminescent, archive-inspired cinema that recast the present, past and future of her people in a radiant new light. Diving into the NFB’s vast archive, she parses the complicated cinematic representation of the Inuit, harvesting fleeting truths and fortuitous accidents from a range of sources—newsreels, propaganda, ethnographic docs, and work by Indigenous filmmakers. Embedding historic footage into original animation, she conjures up a vision of hope and beautiful possibility.

The story of an ice-fishing trip taken by two unlikely friends—Ukaliq the Arctic hare and Kalla the lemming. Well-meaning but impatient, Ukaliq can’t catch a single Arctic char! Good thing Kalla is there. Embodying the calm, thoughtful nature of traditional hunters and those who live in the Arctic, Kalla shares his wisdom—and his snacks—with his unprepared friend.

Three young Inuits set off in search of a promised land to save their clan from starvation.

In this animated short the artist tells the story of an Inuit hunter who clubs a seal pup on the ice and then later dies himself. The film's ethereal images are created and transformed in sand.

A polar bear is hunted by Eskimos. But suddenly the hunt gets interrupted. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive.

On the eve of summer vacation, Prune leaves her parents for the traditional "end-of-year school trip." But once she's gone, an incredible snowstorm hits the small town where her family lives. Philémon, her younger brother, then makes an astonishing discovery: an Inuit family has settled on a roundabout. The meeting of these two worlds sets the stage for a wonderful adventure.

Taqralik Partridge asks what if every language that had been lost to English — every word, every syllable — grew up out of the ground in flowers? Taqralik’s grandmother’s Scottish Gaelic and her father’s Inuktitut unfold in memories of her family, of pain, and of love.

Combining figurative abstraction with magic realism, this animated short depicts a world in which whales fall out of the sky and fish turn into balloons. It is a black and white evocation of the real world, transformed by the director's special sense of whimsy. With bold lines reminiscent of the stark simplicity of Inuit art, this cautionary tale is a reminder of the interconnectedness of all things. We are all affected by the fate of the Arctic, which each year is disappearing a little farther into the ocean.

Two young friends are spending a day away from their camp. Unfortunately for them, an ancient land spirit -- an amautalik -- is also in the area. Luckily for them both, one of the children's difficult life has taught him to think quickly.

This animated short is a tragic and twisted story about the dangers of revenge. A cruel mother mistreats her son, feeding him dog meat and forcing him to sleep in the cold. A loon, who tells the boy that his mother blinded him, helps the child regain his eyesight. Then the boy seeks revenge, releasing his mother’s lifeline as she harpoons a whale and watching her drown. Based on a portion of the epic Inuit legend “The Blind Boy and the Loon.”

Inuit oral history is filled with strange beings and supernatural creatures. One of these feared land spirits is the Ogress of the Gravelbank. This cruel being was known to lure children into her lair and trap them there. All that perish in that cave remain there as spirits and animated corpses. This short vignette introduces viewers to this malevolent spirit who is unknown to all but the people of the far north.

The Inuit folktale of an old woman and the orphaned polar bear cub she took in as her own child.

This animated short tells the story of Qalupalik, a part-human sea monster that lives deep in the Arctic Ocean and preys on children who do not listen to their parents or elders. That is the fate of Angutii, a young boy who refuses to help out in his family’s camp and who plays by the shoreline... until one day Qalupalik seizes him and drags him away. Angutii's father, a great hunter, must then embark on a lengthy kayak journey to try and bring his son home.

In this animated short, a self-important colonial explorer emerges from a sailing ship and plants a flag on the Arctic ice, as a bemused Inuit hunter looks on. Then the explorer plants another, and another, and another, while the hunter, clearly not impressed that his land has been “discovered,” quietly goes about his business. In this charming and humorous re-imagining of first contact between Inuit and European, Jonathan Wright brings us the story of a savvy hunter and the ill-equipped explorer he outwits.

The Sun and the Moon are born, as a woman searches to reveal the identity of her mystery lover in this strikingly animated Inuit creation tale.

He was called "He Who Has Two Souls". He was beautiful as a woman. And handsome as a man. He hesitated.

This animated short tells the story of a ferocious polar bear turned to stone by an Inuk shaman. The tale is based on emerging filmmaker Echo Henoche's favourite legend, as told to her by her grandmother in her home community of Nain, Nunatsiavut, on Labrador's North Coast. Hand-drawn and painted by Henoche in a style all her own, Shaman is the first collaboration between the Labrador artist and the NFB.