Some left-field Montreal directors, a record-breaking animator and a team of veteran horror-film artisans are among the Canadians in the running at tonight\u2019s Oscars.<\/p>\n
Montreal filmmaker Alison McAlpine is nominated for best documentary short for \u201cPerfectly a Strangeness,\u201d her hypnotic film following three donkeys exploring a semi-abandoned observatory in Chile\u2019s Atacama Desert.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, fellow Montrealers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski are up for best animated short film for \u201cThe Girl Who Cried Pearls.\u201d The duo were previously nominated in the category \u2014 18 years ago \u2014 for their debut short \u201cMadame Tutli-Putli.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the best animated feature category, Korean-Canadian filmmaker Maggie Kang is nominated for co-writing and co-directing Netflix\u2019s \u201cKPop Demon Hunters,\u201d which is the most-viewed film in the streamer\u2019s history. She\u2019ll compete against Toronto\u2019s Domee Shi for co-writing and co-directing Pixar\u2019s \u201cElio.\u201d<\/p>\n
Canadians behind the look of \u201cFrankenstein\u201d are also up for makeup and hairstyling awards \u2014 Jordan Samuel and Cliona Furey. The production design team on the film also received a nomination, including production designer Tamara Deverell and set decorator Shane Vieau.<\/p>\n
The film is also nominated for best picture, which includes Canadian producer J. Miles Dale among its nominees.<\/p>\n
McAlpine says it\u2019s been \u201ca huge honour and a wild adventure\u201d to see \u201cPerfectly a Strangeness\u201d compete for an Academy Award.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s wild. It\u2019s the out-of-the-box indie film. It comes out of nowhere.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several members of the film\u2019s small crew plan to attend the ceremony together, paying their own way.<\/p>\n
The donkeys, however, won\u2019t be hitting the red carpet.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love that,\u201d McAlpine laughs. \u201cBut I think a poor donkey in L.A. would be traumatized.\u201d<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 13, 2026.<\/p>\n
Alex Nino Gheciu, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Some left-field Montreal directors, a record-breaking animator and a team of veteran horror-film artisans are among the Canadians…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537958,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194292],"tags":[49,48,2338],"class_list":["post-537957","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-montreal","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-montreal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537957","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537957"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537957\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537958"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537957"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537957"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537957"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}