HARVEY
2023 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Janice Nadeau
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, drama
Tones: melancholic, tender, whimsical
A young boy recalls the spring day his father died, viewing grief and family upheaval through a child's vivid imagination.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a grief film through a child's eyes—which, yes, sounds precious—but Nadeau refuses the maudlin trap; the whimsy doesn't undercut the loss, it *is* the loss, which is genuinely unsettling in ways most coming-of-age shorts aren't brave enough to attempt.
A formally composed meditation on memory and imagination that positions itself squarely in the lineage of poetic animation; the restraint in the visual language—what Nadeau *doesn't* show—places this in conversation with the best of contemporary NFB practice.
The singular choice here is letting the father remain largely absent from the frame while dominating the emotional architecture; that absence, rendered through a child's imaginative reach rather than explanation, is what transforms a familiar premise into something that actually lands.