Friday staff pick: Land of the Heads

With classics such as The Sweater, The Cat Came Back and dozens of others, the NFB is rightfully famous for its animation films for children. Today I want to tell you about an animation film very much not for children that was recently added to our streaming site, NFB.ca. Let me be clear. This film is obviously not the sort of film everyone will send their mom and post on their friends’ Facebook walls. If you’re a Tim Burton fan, however, or one of those people who can’t get enough of Halloween, this film will make you lose your head (bad pun intended.)

Titled Land of the Heads, this animated short from from Cédric Louis and Claude Barras tells the story of a couple who lives in a spooky castle sitting on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the sea. There’s the wife, wrinkled and vain, who’s preferred chopping her own head off instead of seeing it age, and her sad, accordion-playing vampire husband, whom she sends on errands to try to find her a new one. But madame is fussy! And just any head won’t do! So heads fly, in a funny yet macabre cartoon-Kill Bill sort of way. Give it a watch and tell me what you think.

Land of the Heads, Cédric Louis & Claude Barras, provided by the National Film Board of Canada