Producing Animation: Maral Mohammadian
This week on Skwigly we’re excited to bring you an interview with Maral Mohammadian, Producer at the National Film Board of Canada (NFB)’s English Animation Studio in Montreal. From a background in the arts, Maral would work at the Ottawa International Animation Festival (OIAF) for several years before being brought on board as an Associate Producer at the NFB in 2006, where she would work on their popular Hothouse apprenticeship initiative among other branches of the organisation.
Since becoming Producer at their English Animation Studio in 2014, her work with the NFB has included producing such acclaimed short films as I Am Here (Dir. Eoin Duffy), Freaks of Nurture (Dir. Alexandra Lemay), Shannon Amen (Dir. Chris Dainty), The Weatherman and the Shadowboxer (Dir. Randall Okita), HIDE (Dir. Daniel Gray) and Impossible Figures and Other Stories I (Dir. Marta Pajek) as well as the VR story-game Museum of Symmetry (Paloma Dawkins) among others.
This month sees the North American premiere (following its world premiere at Annecy) of recent projects Maybe Elephants by acclaimed director Torill Kove at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) as well as its inclusion in OIAF, while Amanda Strong’s Inkwo for When the Starving Return will get a world premiere at TIFF and also screen at OIAF later this month. Ahead of these exciting outings Skwigly were privileged to speak with Maral Mohammadian and learn more about her journey into the world of animation.
Can you tell us about the work you’ve done prior to becoming part of the NFB, and what steered you to the position you currently hold there?
I got my start in the Ottawa arts scene, making films with friends and working at an artist- run centre called SAW Video. Animation was not on my radar at all, apart from experimental films bordering animation. In that scene I discovered the Ottawa International Animation Festival and my mind was blown. I ended up working at the festival for four years, programming their artist talks and then as the director of their new industry conference, called TAC (now known as the Television Animation Conference). It was to be a hub for the industry, but the hidden agenda was to bring the art and industry closer together. So I was steeped in a wide range of animation, from experimental to commercial. The NFB was a great supporter of the festival, and I was working with producer Michael Fukushima on programming ideas when Michael essentially recruited me. I started as associate producer for Hothouse 4 and my role expanded to other productions, including the Stereoscopic 3D lab. I had an influential couple of years in the documentary studio and the French Program’s interactive studio before being hired full time as a producer in the English Animation Studio in 2014, together with my colleague Jelena Popović, who is currently the animation producer in the French Animation Unit. It felt firmly as though I was home again but with expanded horizons.
©Maral Mohammadian
As a producer, what is the main appeal to you of animation as a filmmaking tool?
I love animation for its power to express the inexplicable. If it was a language, it would have a huge alphabet. Its grammar is versatile. And in a way, each technique is a different dialect. So that makes it incredibly dynamic for creative expression. It’s also a craft—you have to make everything. So it can’t be neutral. Everything is a choice. I am in awe of animation filmmakers—they have the ability to operate on another temporal level than most of us.
The films you have worked on make use of a variety of different techniques; do any pose any particular challenges or have advantages over another?
The beauty of the NFB is that it’s technique-agnostic. Anything goes, as long as it’s cohesive to the intention and feasible. The advantage of 2D is that it’s more or less the same material from start to finish, whereas stop motion and 3D have to evolve from something graphic to something constructed or volumetric. With stop motion, you have to build it before you understand how it will work, and of course that feeds back into the storytelling. So you really need to develop the writing and visuals in parallel. But the advantage of stop motion is that there’s more room for serendipity because you’re dealing with something physical. It’s intimate in a unique way.
In recent years the NFB has cultivated relationships with international co- producers for some fantastic films. How does the relationship tend to work with these collaborations? Is there a system in place or does it vary from film to film?
International co-productions with non-Canadian directors are a very small percentage of what we do. But a model we’ve embraced in recent years involves a deeper relationship. The NFB is not a funding agency, which means we make all decisions together. Each producer is responsible for their share of the work and budget, which is decided at the very beginning, in careful consideration with the director. Who do they want to work with? What is the dream scenario? What are the strengths and limitations of each partner? This kind of custom-designed production unifies everyone under a common vision and builds trust. It allows for honest discussions later on when challenges invariably arise. We also try to have the director spend time at our Montreal studio. A highlight for me was our co-production with Poland’s Animoon on the final film of Marta Pajek’s Impossible Figures and other stories trilogy. Marta was based in Warsaw, but she spent almost three months in Montreal working with the animators and getting steeped in NFB culture and history.
In general, have you found that these international co-productions have been beneficial to the overall end product of the films?
In some cases, the film may not have been possible otherwise. Or joining forces opened opportunities the director didn’t otherwise have. I do feel that the storytelling has been enriched. The films speak to more people, perhaps because there is a multi-cultural perspective. For sure the distribution is stronger because there are more partners.
A significant strand of your work with the NFB has been their fantastic Hothouse initiative. Can you tell us a bit about the history of the scheme and how you came to be involved with it?
Hothouse was thought up in the early 2000s by Michael Fukushima and David Verrall. It was an answer to two problems: how to better support filmmakers struggling with their first NFB film, and how to bring new filmmakers into the NFB. It was designed as a fast track through a full NFB experience, from concept to completion, in 12 intensive weeks. Each edition invites six directors to make a one-minute film based on a theme, with the support of producers, a carefully selected mentoring director, technical experts and the filmmaking community at the NFB. I’ve been involved more or less since the fourth edition in 2007, first as associate producer and then as producer since 2014. I love the speed and constraints. We’ve had a lot of fun playing with the themes and parameters. Some of Canada’s best filmmakers have been mentors—Chris Landreth, Ann Marie Fleming, Jeff Barnaby, Howie Shia, to name a few. It has expanded the sandbox of animation creation and distribution and has rejuvenated the NFB.
We were very enthusiastic to include this year’s Hothouse films in our Showcase section of the site. How did you find working with the 2024 crop and how they interpreted this year’s theme of “Small Things Considered”?
Every cohort has a special dynamic, but this group was all heart: giddy, positive, thoughtful, supportive of each other. We received a jaw-dropping 401 applications. These six were original and self-aware. Their films had roots to family, memory, history, ecology. Maybe it’s the dark times we’re living in, but we were uplifted by their projects. Most of the credit for this edition goes to the mentoring director, Andrea Dorfman, and associate producer Anne Koizumi.
Over the years have you found the Hothouse scheme to be valuable to participants, and have they enjoyed a continuing relationship with the NFB?
At one time about half of our productions were made by Hothouse alumni. At the moment it’s about 30 percent. We also frequently hire Hothousers as crew. On Maybe Elephants, for example, three of the animators were Hothouse alumni: Jo Meuris, Eva Cvijanović and Louis Bodart. Amanda Strong was an associate producer in the Indigenous edition in 2019, which paved the way for the work we would do together as co-producers on her newest film, Inkwo for When the Starving Return, premiering at TIFF this year. Hothouse has hugely expanded our talent pool.
For future applicants who might be interested in applying, what are the criteria the NFB tends to look for?
Hothouse is open to emerging Canadian filmmakers who have some experience with animation, whether self-taught or through post-secondary school. We look for artistic distinction, originality, creative maturity to thrive in a professional environment and a willingness to work within the program constraints. Many of the proposals are too ambitious so feasibility is very important. It’s also wise to come up with a fresh idea inspired by the theme. The program requires agility so it’s not ideal for a high-stakes masterpiece concept.
One of your most recent projects that we featured on the site is Maybe Elephants, which saw the fantastic return of Oscar winner Torill Kove. What were some of the highlights and/or challenges of working on this project to you as a producer?
I adopted this project during development after it had been in the works for some time. It was a bit intimidating, to be honest. I was filling some big shoes from Torill’s previous NFB producers, Marcy Page and Michael Fukushima. Torill is so loved and respected. I wanted to do a good job! The film was also different from her previous work in some significant ways, dealing with delicate personal and political themes. These challenges turned out to be the most rewarding, to see them through in all the intricate ways that producers must work. A big highlight was the music! The score was composed by Luigi Allemano, who turned Torill’s eclectic mix tape of reference music into a vivacious score. He brought on Kenyan musician Daniel Onyango and we did a recording session with Daniel’s band in Sweden, with Luigi directing in real time from Montreal. It was pretty magical. The film is a co-production by Mikrofilm AS and the NFB.
You’ve also worked on interactive projects. What would you say are the main differences (pros/cons or otherwise) between those and standard films from a production standpoint?
The intriguing thing about interactivity is the notion of play. You can carve out a role for the audience, which makes the experience uniquely visceral. When we were in development on Paloma Dawkins’ Museum of Symmetry, she had some wild ideas about how the environment should be alive and aware of the audience. Through development it became clear this was a world you need to step into. That’s how it became a VR story-game. It was role-play—a celebration of childhood wonder. But interactivity does also add exponential complexity. There are so many moving parts.
Can you tell us anything about some of your projects currently in development that you’re excited about?
We’re working on a short called Knowing Gaze by an outstanding animator named Dylan Glynn. It’s an intimate portrait of three gay men confronting their fears, biases and messy ideas about gender. It lifts the curtain on some of the taboo conversations within queer culture, what Dylan calls “the bitchiness, the gossip, the playfulness, the vulnerability, the melancholy, the poetry, the pain.” We’re using TV Paint for 2D animation combined with paint on glass on a multiplane system. Another highlight is Shovelling by Mathias Horhager. It’s a simple metaphor for the thankless, grueling work that is parenting, particularly fatherhood. It’s our first production done entirely in Blender. Being open source, it’s more of an artist’s tool than other 3D programs, so we’ve managed to create a beautifully stylized design and cinematography in a 3D world. We’re working with Seneca Polytechnic, a front-runner college in computer animation. This project has rekindled the relationship between the NFB and Seneca, which spawned three acclaimed Chris Landreth films, including Ryan and Subconscious Password.
Maybe Elephants will screen at TIFF in Shorts Cuts 2024 Programme 1 September 5th & 12th and at OIAF September 26th & 27th in Short Film Competition 3
Inkwo for When the Starving return screens in TIFF’s Short Cuts 2024 Programme 3 September 7th, 8th & 12th and in OIAF’s Canadian Panorama September 26th & 27th