Synopsis

Madame Tutli-Putli boards a night train with a mountain of luggage and the emotional weight of her past. Traveling alone, she encounters eccentric passengers and unsettling strangers as the ordinary journey slips into a nightmarish struggle between reality and imagination. Trapped in a mysterious, increasingly dangerous situation, she must confront fears she can no longer keep buried.

Factoids & Trivia

• The 2007 film runs approximately 17 minutes and contains no spoken dialogue.

• It was produced by the National Film Board of Canada and took more than five years to complete.

• Real human eyes were filmed separately and digitally composited onto the stop-motion puppets. The technique gives the characters an unusually lifelike and unsettling presence.

• The film's tactile look depends on handmade puppets, detailed miniature sets, fabric costumes, and frame-by-frame animation rather than computer-generated characters.

• The production's sound design and music were treated as major storytelling elements, helping transform the train journey into a psychological and metaphysical experience.

• Madame Tutli-Putli received an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short Film at the 80th Academy Awards in 2008.

• It won two prizes at the Cannes Film Festival and was selected for more than 100 festivals around the world.

• The film became an early international breakthrough for its Montreal-based creators and helped establish their reputation for dark, surreal stop-motion animation.