The National Scream
1980 · 27m · Canada
Directed by Robert Awad, David Verrall
Genres: animation, documentary, satire
Tones: absurdist, humorous, whimsical
A satirical animated mock-documentary pokes at Canada's hunt for a distinct national identity, including an explanation for how the beaver became a national symbol.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A 1980 animated film that uses mock-documentary form to demolish the very concept of national mythology—the beaver-as-symbol bit is the perfect Trojan horse for dismantling earnest identity-building. This is the kind of subversive, formally playful satire that makes you question why we still take these origin stories seriously.
The film sits smartly in the lineage of Canadian satire and experimental animation, deploying the mock-documentary mode with precision to interrogate institutional narratives; it's a work aware of its own formal traditions while interrogating them from within.
The directorial decision to animate a mock-documentary—refusing the easier realism of live-action—forces every comedic beat to live or die by timing and character design, which makes the absurdist premise land with surprising specificity rather than just landing as a concept.