Any Time Is Story Time
2004 · 11m · Canada
Directed by Michel Drapeau
The Marquez family discovers reading together after a storyteller introduces animated tales. Reluctant parents overcome barriers and family routines change.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A feel-good family literacy parable—the kind of consensus-friendly NFB content that wins hearts and does nothing to your brain; there's literally zero friction here, which is precisely why everyone else will pick it first.
Drapeau's integration of animated storytelling within live action creates a formally deliberate conversation between two narrative languages, and the film's restraint in showing family transformation through routine rather than epiphany places it squarely in the tradition of humanist animation concerned with social fabric.
The masterstroke is the decision to let the *act* of listening—the parents' physical stillness, the child's rapt attention—carry the emotional weight rather than manufacturing a climactic moment; that restraint is what makes this work on a modest budget.