The National Film Board of Canada (NFB) animated short The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski has been nominated for Best Animated Short Subject at Hollywood's Annie Awards.
It's the latest honour for this haunting stop-motion fable, which is one of 15 films shortlisted for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film.
The Montreal-based animation duo of Lavis and Szczerbowski first captured global attention with their 2007 NFB short Madame Tutli-Putli, which received 45 awards and honours, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short.
This is their sixth collaboration with the NFB-a remarkable creative partnership spanning two decades that's explored in a new NFB Blog post.
The Girl Who Cried Pearls is now streaming free on NFB.ca, YouTube and all NFB apps in Canada. It will also be featured at New York City's Animation First Festival, taking place February 5 to 8, 2026.
Presented by ASIFA-Hollywood, the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, the 53rd Annie Awards will take place on Saturday, February 21, 2026 at UCLA's Royce Hall in Los Angeles.
Quick facts
The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski (16 min)
Produced by Julie Roy, Marc Bertrand and Christine Noël
