[projekktor id=’27305′]

The unique animated film Window Horses is a Canadian picture directed by Ann Marie Fleming. After premiering at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival the film screened at TIFF last year and was selected to their Canada’s Top 10 list. The film features the voices of Sandra Oh, Nancy Kwan, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Camyar Chaichian, Navid Negahban, Omid Abtahi, Ellen Page, and Don McKellar.

Twenty-year-old poet Rosie Ming lives at home with her over-protective Chinese grandparents, never having travelled anywhere alone. When she’s invited to perform at a poetry festival in Shiraz, Iran, she meets colourful poets and Persians, and finally learns more about the Iranian father who she had assumed abandoned her. Rosie embarks on an unwitting journey of forgiveness, reconciliation, and understanding, as she discovers her father’s past and her own cultural identity.

In an interview with TIFF Fleming described how politics almost got in the way of making the film. “I’d developed the project with a script and a storyboard. Then, in 2011 with the Iranian election, things went south and Canada cut off all diplomatic relations with Iran. It seemed impossible to make this film. Everyone said to change where it [was set], but being in Iran is so essential to the story.”

Window Horses is rated G.