The NFB: 86 Years, 7,000+ Awards… and Counting!

Let’s celebrate the National Film Board of Canada’s 86th anniversary on May 2 by taking a deep dive into the NFB’s long list of awards—a staggering total of over 7,000 honours received between 1941 and 2025!

This year alone, the NFB has so far racked up more than 90 awards at festivals across the globe, in Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, New York, Los Angeles, London, Rome, Bucheon and Sapporo, among many other cities—including at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, the world’s oldest animation fest. Watching Loïc Darses’ Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert (2024), which was shown at Annecy, is a fantastic way to kick off this 86th-anniversary celebration. The festival also awarded an Honorary Crystal to Canadian filmmaker Pierre Hébert to recognize his 60 years of innovative work in animated cinema.[i] This feature-length doc is a tribute to the pioneering animator, whose scratch-on-film technique has long served as a vessel for his artistic exploration.

Scratches of Life: The Art of Pierre Hébert, Loïc Darses, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

The NFB at “the Big Three” and “Big Five”

The NFB has received 60 honours from the world’s three most important and prestigious film fests. Known as “the Big Three,” the Venice, Cannes and Berlin international festivals are the longest running in the world (Venice is the oldest, founded in 1932) and have undoubtedly shaped the world cinema canon. The NFB has nabbed 14 awards at Venice, 32 at Cannes and 14 at Berlin.

In recent decades, two more fests have been added to the list of premiere film events, forming the elite quintet known as “the Big Five”: the Toronto International Film Festival (where the NFB has received 13 awards) and, more recently, the Sundance Film Festival (where the NFB has won two awards). The latest honour for an NFB co-pro from a Big Five fest is TIFF’s Amplify Voices Award for Best Canadian Feature Film, which went to Nisha Pahuja’s To Kill a Tiger (2022). Amassing no less than 21 awards worldwide, this documentary is about a farmer in India who demands justice for his 13-year-old daughter, a survivor of sexual assault. This is disturbing subject matter, but Pahuja’s respectful treatment foregrounds the protagonists’ courage above all else.

To Kill a Tiger, Nisha Pahuja, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

227 Awards from Four ASIFA Festivals

The NFB’s had immense success in the documentary and fiction formats, but it’s been even more triumphant in the animation industry. NFB films have won hundreds of awards at the only four international animation festivals sponsored by ASIFA (the international animated film association): Annecy; Ottawa, the largest animation fest in North America; Zagreb, the second-oldest animation festival in the world, founded by ASIFA in 1972; and Hiroshima, a qualifying festival for the Academy Awards and the Annie Awards. (Its 36-year history sadly came to an abrupt end in 2020, with its 18th edition.[ii])

In total, as of the writing of this blog post, the NFB has received 227 awards from these four top-ranked animation festivals (64 from Annecy, 88 from Ottawa, 46 from Zagreb and 29 from Hiroshima). Theodore Ushev’s The Physics of Sorrow (2019) is one recent NFB film that earned awards at Annecy, Ottawa and Zagreb (and more than 40 in total at festivals worldwide). I was moved on many levels by this incredible, 27-minute masterpiece, which proves just how universal a personal story can be. The film tracks an unknown man’s life as he sifts through memories of his youth in Bulgaria, through to his increasingly rootless and unhappy adult years in Canada.

The Physics of Sorrow, Theodore Ushev, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

The NFB at the Oscars

National Film Board of Canada productions and co-productions have received no less than 78 Academy Award nominations and 11 Oscars over the decades, in addition to an Honorary Academy Award given to the NFB in 1989.

Here’s the list of NFB films that have won the coveted award for best animated short: The Danish Poet (Torill Kove, 2006); Ryan (Chris Landreth, 2004); Bob’s Birthday (David Fine and Alison Snowden, 1993); Every Child (Eugene Fedorenko, 1979); Special Delivery (Eunice Macaulay and John Weldon 1978); and The Sand Castle (Co Hoedeman, 1977).

Cynthia Scott’s Flamenco at 5:15 (1983), Terre Nash’s If You Love This Planet (1982), Norman McLaren’s Neighbours (1952) and Stuart Legg’s Churchill’s Island (1941) all won the Oscar for short documentary, and Beverly Shaffer’s  I’ll Find a Way (1977) received the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

The NFB’s most recent Oscar nominee for best animated short is Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby’s The Flying Sailor (2022), which uses the story of a sailor propelled skyward by the 1917 Halifax Explosion as its springboard (so to speak) for a memorable meditation on life.

The Flying Sailor, Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

More Than Eight Decades and 7,000 Awards Later…

This May alone, NFB films are making the rounds at several prestigious events, including the official competition at both Cannes Film Festival and the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. In addition, several NFB productions have been nominated for major awards at the Yorkton Film Festival in Saskatchewan, considered to be the longest continuous film festival in North America.

In short, The National Film Board of Canada has a unique place within the international filmmaking landscape. Its very existence challenges the simplistic view that non-US and European cinema is confined to the Global South or the margins of the film industry.[iii] The 314 awards noted above comprise not even five percent of the 7,077 awards garnered by the NFB throughout its 86-year history. And the awards are just one aspect of the NFB’s highly successful film brand. Aside from its acclaimed productions, the NFB brand has been bolstered by remarkable distribution initiatives, film preservation expertise and an emphasis on mentorship—factors that have established the Board as one of the most respected organizations in the highly competitive global film industry/ecosystem.

Neighbours, Norman McLaren, provided by the National Film Board of Canada

For this 86th-anniversary celebration, the NFB encourages you to check out some of the innovative films mentioned in this blog post or showcased on our NFB Classics channel, which is also featuring Norman McLaren’s tour de force above, Neighbours, and where you’ll find more essential titles from our collection. We hope you’ll take some time to explore these thoughtfully chosen films, many of which have highlighted important events or people in Canadian history and had a significant impact on the national film industry.

[i] http://pierrehebert.com/fr/2024/08/12/annecy-2024-un-cristal-dhonneur-pour-pierre-hebert/

[ii] https://asifa.jp/en/hiroshima/index.html

[iii] https://blog.nfb.ca/blog/2024/04/12/85-years-of-nfb-filmmaking-a-look-at-what-makes-canadas-renowned-public-producer-so-unique-curators-perspective/