'The Street' by Caroline Leaf

Never mind all the awards showered upon Caroline Leaf’s The Street; it was important because it one of the first Canadian animation films to tell - inspired by a collection of stories by Mordecai Richler - a distinctly Canadian story. Leaf’s unique paint-on-glass technique enriches Richler’s tale about a family’s reactions to the passing of a grandmother by creating dreamlike and transitory images that breathe in and out of one another; barely giving us (or the characters) time – as with our own lives - to fully comprehend the magnitude of what is passing before us.

In creating this sensitive, unique and very Canadian film, Caroline Leaf also shows us that animation, when it wants to be, can be a powerful and poignant dramatic tool, a medium capable of uncovering the deepest recesses of the human soul.