Every October the Croisette in Cannes in the south of France fills with buyers clutching lanyards and sizzle reels. Somewhere in that crush sits Nathalie Bourdon, with a vault of 7,000 films behind her. This year she has India on her mind.
Bourdon is director, distribution and market development at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). She has been coming to Mipcom for years. For her, it is where she shakes new hands, catches up with old buyers and sees where the business is heading.
The NFB has between 6,000 and 7,000 titles in its catalogue and adds 40 to 50 new ones each year, split between animation and documentary. Bourdon does not push them all down one conveyor belt.
“Each title has its unique way to get into the world,” she said. “We need to follow those unique ways, specificities, and then we sell it to the market, the broadcaster, the platforms.”
This year’s calling card is The Anta Claus of the South Pole, a new animated TV special from Canadian animator Cordell Barker. The NFB made it with Tonic DNA, an independent studio in Montreal. Crave, Bell Media’s streaming service in Canada, has already bought it. The rest of the world is up for grabs.
Barker is NFB royalty. His The Cat Came Back, about a man who cannot get rid of a cat that keeps coming home, is still one of the board’s best-loved shorts. He is exactly the sort of filmmaker the NFB exists to back.
“We really care about the talent,” said Bourdon. “We’re like an incubator, and we take the time it takes to produce an animation that will be top of the art, innovative, pushing the boundaries.”
That patience has filled a trophy cabinet. The NFB has 79 Oscar nominations and 12 wins. In 1989, the Academy handed it an honorary award for overall excellence in cinema. Bourdon points to the Oscar-nominated The Girl Who Cried Pearls as proof of what happens when filmmakers get the time and freedom to chase a big idea.
She is just as keen on partners. “Canada is one of the best partners to do co-production,” she said, citing the country’s co-production treaties and its deep bench of animators. At the NFB, working with others goes hand in hand with taking creative risks and letting a film take as long as it needs.
Then comes the pitch. “We’re always open for business with India, to co-produce or to sell our work.”
Bourdon admits the NFB has barely a toehold here. She sees traffic running both ways. Indian buyers could dip into the Canadian vault. Canadian and Indian animators could share a drawing board.
Indian studios with a story to tell and a stomach for risk know where to find her. She will be the one in Cannes with 7,000 films and an open diary.
