The award-winning animated short film The Flying Sailor is available on The New Yorker’s digital channels today, November 18, as part of the magazine’s award-winning Screening Room series. A National Film Board of Canada (NFB) production, the film is the latest work by the Oscar-nominated and Palme d’Or-winning duo of Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby.
Inspired by the incredible true-life story of a man blown two kilometers through the air by the 1917 Halifax Explosion — the largest accidental non-nuclear explosion in history — The Flying Sailor is an exhilarating meditation on the wonder and fragility of being.
Forbis and Tilby are Calgary-based animators who have shared Best Animated Short Film Academy Award nominations for When the Day Breaks (1999) and Wild Life (2011), with Tilby also nominated individually for Strings (1991). The NFB has a long and distinguished history at the Oscars, with NFB productions and co-productions garnering more Academy Award nominations than any other film organization based outside of Hollywood.
The Flying Sailor debuts on The New Yorker’s digital channels after a world premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France, a North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival and a U.S. festival premiere at the New York City Short Film Festival, where it received the award for Best Animation.
Making the official selections list at more than 20 festivals, The Flying Sailor‘s accolades also include awards from Countryside Animafest Cyprus, São Paulo International Short Film Festival, Calgary International Film Festival, Toronto After Dark Film Festival and the Ottawa International Animation Festival.
The film is the latest NFB animated short to be published by The New Yorker, following Joanna Quinn and Les Mills’ acclaimed 2021 Beryl Productions International–NFB co-production Affairs of the Art, last year.
The Flying Sailor is available now to stream for free from The New Yorker’s digital channels, watch it here. Check out the trailer below:
