Moon Man
2004 · 3m · Canada
Directed by Paul Morstad
Genres: animation, fantasy, musical
Tones: mythic, surreal, whimsical
Codfish Dan, a Newfoundland folk hero, lands an improbable catch on a trip to the Milky Way, in an animated short drawn from Stompin' Tom Connors's song 'Moon Man Newfie.'
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A Newfoundland folk legend fishing in space could've been arch or cutesy, but Morstad plays it straight—treating Codfish Dan's cosmic catch with the deadpan reverence of actual mythmaking, which is exactly the kind of tonal restraint most shorts botch.
The film sits beautifully in the lineage of Canadian literary animation and folk-song adaptation, with Morstad's drawn forms honoring both Connors's vernacular voice and a longer tradition of animators treating regional legend as worthy material for formal consideration.
The decision to animate this as lived mythology rather than novelty—grounding the surreal premise in tactile, hand-drawn geography—transforms what could've been a novelty song into something genuinely mythic, and that tonal choice does all the heavy lifting.