Rediscover Chris Lavis And Maciek Szczerbowski’s Oscar-Nominated NFB Gem ‘Madame Tutli-Putli’

As The Girl Who Cried Pearls continues its acclaimed festival journey, it’s a great time to revisit one of co-directors Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s past classics, the Oscar-nominated Madame Tutli-Putli.

Traveling alone on a night train, Madame Tutli-Putli becomes entangled in a desperate metaphysical adventure, adrift between real and imagined worlds.

An Academy Award nominee in 2007, this exhilarating, existential stop-motion odyssey is as fresh and compelling today as when it first dazzled audiences almost two decades ago.

The film received more than 45 awards and honors, including its Oscar nomination. Highlights include the Canal+ Grand Prize for Best Short Film at the Cannes Film Festival, a Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, and the Grand Jury Prize for Animated Short at SXSW.

Madame Tutli-Putli marked the beginning of a remarkable creative journey for Lavis and Szczerbowski at the NFB, which has yielded five films to date, including their Maurice Sendak adaptation, Higglety Pigglety Pop!, and their latest, The Girl Who Cried Pearls.

A masterclass in craftsmanship and creativity, Madame Tutli-Putli introduced a bold innovation: integrating live-action eyes into puppets during post-production — a technique that drew the Academy’s attention.

Its story began with a single mood: a woman leaving something behind. To capture that feeling, the duo spent two weeks aboard a train north of Lake Superior, filming its spaces and interviewing passengers. It took two years to bring the story to life, as the directors built miniature sets and characters with painstaking detail.

As in all of Lavis and Szczerbowski’s work, actors played a crucial role in shaping the puppets’ movements and personalities. For Madame Tutli-Putli, the human inspiration, actress Laurie Maher, profoundly influenced the essence of the main character.

That spirit of meticulous craft and bold experimentation has shaped every project from the acclaimed Montreal animation duo, culminating in their haunting new work, The Girl Who Cried Pearls.