The Best of Ottawa touring program showcases audience favorites and award winners from the 2019 Ottawa International Animation Festival competition. The package offers a sampling of exceptional animated short films that explore moments of humor, profundity and inspiration. The works in this collection provide a unique cross-section of some of the best contemporary film artists from around the world.

This year’s selection includes films that defy logic, defy physics, defy convention and especially defy expectations. Sofie Gate’s brilliantly textured Slug Life begs the question whether you’ve ever truly seen a relationship film at all. In Baby Baby, directors Aggelos Papantoniou & Nikhil Markale provide a look at young—VERY young—parenthood. Finally, Thomas Renoldner’s Grand Prize winner DONT KNOW WHAT marries humor and non-narrative filmmaking in a deftly masterful way, challenging preconceptions that ‘experimental’ means stuffy.

Recommended for mature audiences. Contains brief sequences of flashing lights.

Baby Baby | Aggelos Papantoniou & Nikhil Markale | Australia
Erodium Thunk | Winston Hacking | Canada
Girl in the Hallway | Valerie Barnhart | Canada
Alfred Fauchet, Here and There (Alfred Fauchet, à droite, à gauche) | Mathieu Georis | Belgium
Tricky Women 2019 Trailer | Marta Pajek | Poland
Slug Life | Sophie Gate | UK
Acid Rain | Tomek Popakul | Poland
Gravedad | Matisse Gonzalez | Germany
DONT KNOW WHAT | Thomas Renoldner | Austria

Runtime: 78 Minutes