I Want a Dog
2003 · 10m · Canada
Directed by Sheldon Cohen
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, family
Tones: humorous, tender, whimsical
May wants a dog more than anything but her parents keep telling her to wait, so she devises an ingenious plan to change their minds and finally get a puppy of her own.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
A kid wants a dog—that's the entire premise, and Cohen refuses to punch it up with irony or subversion, just lets it *be* sincere. It's almost boring enough to be interesting, but not quite.
A graceful entry in the stop-motion coming-of-age tradition, with the kind of measured pacing and visual storytelling that recalls the NFB's lineage of character-driven animation—formal and felt.
The genius is in the animation choice itself: Cohen commits fully to May's physical comedy and micro-expressions in clay, turning a simple premise into something moving because every frame earns its tenderness through meticulous puppet work.