BELL MANOR PARK
saturday, August 15, 2026

paddington

With the short films Fox and the Whale, Walk-in-the-Forest, and Get a Grip

After losing his Peruvian rainforest home to an earthquake, a talking young bear named Paddington journeys across seas to find a new home and a last line of connection to his furry family. Finding himself all alone in the big city of London, England, Paddington is temporarily taken in by the kindly Brown family of humans (led by charming performances from Sally Hawkins and Hugh Bonneville) as he searches the big city high and low for a permanent place to rest his hat. Full of riotously funny slapstick comedy, but at its heart a tender story of found family, Paddington is a disarmingly clever and moving tale of immigration and the safe haven that can be found at the end of the journey. 

Through vivid, painterly animation, Toronto filmmaker Robin Joseph’s Oscar-nominated short film Fox and the Whale is a lyrical, wordless fable about a small fox questing across an enchanted wilderness in search of an elusive whale, yearning for something bigger than itself in our curious world. Abbey Collings’ seaside stop-motion short Get a Grip follows a peculiar puffin who docks itself on a fisherman’s boat, feeling that he doesn’t fit in with his winged friends, and quickly learns some new tricks from his human companion. This all-animated-animals programme is rounded out by Abenaki director Diane Obomsawin’s whimsical short film Walk-in-the-Forest, following a medicine man whose quest to help the ailing leads him to the woods, where he discovers an intriguing secret world in which species from all walks of life can co-exist.