OCan is a Film Festival in Ottawa that celebrates Canadian film. Through annual festival screenings at the Bytowne Cinema in November and activities throughout the year, we work to promote Canadian film as distinctive and vital to our country’s culture and the local economy.

OCanFilmFest is a not-for-profit organization that is artist and volunteer-run, and is strongly committed to fostering diversity in its approach to programming. We strive to achieve this by encouraging film submissions from under-represented independent artists including those who identify as women, non-binary, Black, Indigenous, Persons of Colour (BIPoC), persons from the 2SLGBTQ+ community, and persons with disabilities. We recruit diverse members and voices to our Board of Directors and film selection juries.

Sponsorships, donations, grants, film submission fees, and proceeds from ticket sales are used to fund exhibition / artist fees that are paid out to filmmakers for the use of their work in our annual festival screenings.

We believe in programming and content that provides Ottawa audiences with entertaining and high-quality independent films, information, activities and events. Our festival, events, online presence and resources aim to encourage collaboration, artistic innovation and creativity while providing access for a broad audience segment. The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival is committed to cooperation and collaboration with other arts organizations as well as the business community. Our programs are interactive, entertaining, educational and great value for the money.

The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival is an evolution of the Treepot Film Festival, independent filmmaker Jith Paul’s series of public screenings that shocased over 150 Canadian independent films at movie theatres, universities, colleges and parks in downtown Ottawa between 2011 and 2014. Although successful and popular with local audiences, Paul decided it was time to take the Treepot screenings to the next level in order further promote independent filmmakers and to reach out and appeal to larger and broader based audiences in a more formalized structure.  The result is the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival, founded in 2015, with its first annual screenings in 2017. Since then the festival has presented Canadian films of various genres and durations from filmmakers across the country at both in-person and online screenings.

What type of films can I see at the OCan Film festival?

The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival features short, medium-length and feature-length Canadian independently-produced films from a variety of genres from Comedy, Drama, Horror, Thriller, Documentary and more. We have have been fortunate to feature films from almost every province and territory across Canada. Here are the films that have been featured at the festival since the inception of the festival in 2017.

When does the festival take place?

Screenings for the OCan Film Festival usually take place during the first weekend in November every year.

Where are festival films screened?

Our festival screenings moved to the historic Bytowne Cinema (325 Rideau Street, Ottawa, ON K1N 5Y4) in 2022. We hosted our previous screenings at La Nouvelle Scène and the Arts Court Theatre. We briefly moved to online screenings in 2020 and 2021, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

What makes OCan different from other film festivals in Ottawa?

Ottawa is fortunate to host a variety of film festivals thoughout the calendar year at both indoor and outdoor venues throughout the city. Here are some of the differentiating features of the Ottawa Canadian Film Festival:

• Films at OCan are jury-selected from submitted work that is already produced and completed.
• All featured films are Canadian. Films are written or directed by Canadian filmmakers.
• There are no genre, theme or duration requirements. Selected films are usually a mix of short films, feature-length films and those that fall in between those two categories. Films can be narrative (fiction), documentary or experimental. There may even be a sprinkiling of dance films, music videos and cine-poetry.
• There is no premiere requirement. A film you see at OCan may be the first time it is shown to an audience outside of the filmmakers, or it may be Canadian movie that has had incredible buzz on the festival circuit elsewhere but not yet widely available. You may see a short film or two that was made in response a "catch" or featured at another festival held in Ottawa or elsewhere earlier in the year or a few years ago. You may also see a film that has been available on a streaming platform getting its big-screen theatrical debut.
• Artist Fees (also referred to as Screening Fees) are paid to filmmakers for all films selected to screen at OCan.
• Festival audience select one film as the audience favourite every year.

How can I submit a film to screen at OCanFilmFest?

Filmmakers from across Canada are invited to submit films to OCanFilmFest via FilmFreeway. The Call for Submissions lists all criteria and is usually open from January to May each year, with various discount periods posted with the call. The jury watches and evaluates films over the summer and official selections usually announced in October.

Why do you charge a submission fee? There are plenty of free festivals around.

There are couple of reasons that motivate the inclusion of the submission fee. From our experience with earlier seasons, free submissions generate a large number of spam submissions and/or submissions that do not fit the criteria mentioned in the call. We are a volunteer-run organization and the investment in terms of time to weed out and disqualify these entries was significant. It is hoped that requiring a submission fee would encourage filmmakers to make sure the films they submit match the required criteria. We have certainly seen that this is the case over the past few years. The second reason for requiring the submission fee is to use it as one of several sources we use to fund the artist/exhibition fee we pay to all filmmakers whose films are selected to screen at the festival. There are discounts for early submissions. Check the OCanFilmFest listing on FilmFreeway for details.

Do you pay artist fees for films that you screen?

Yes. We pay artist/exhibition fees for films selected to screen at our annual festival in November. It is something we are passionate about and is something we are proud to say we have done since our first annual festival screening in 2017. It is very much in line with our mission to promote and support Canadian film and filmmakers.

Visit our FAQ page for more questions and answers about OCan.

Annual Festivals

We host annual in-person festival screenings in Ottawa every November. Out of an abundance of caution we moved the screenings to Vimeo's Video-On Demand platform in 2020 and 2021, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We returned to in-person screenings at the Bytowne Cinema in November 2022!

Activities and Presentations between Annual Screenings

In addition to our annual screenings, OCanFilmFest programs a number of events including screenings, a web series related to independent filmmaking in Ottawa and elswhere in Canada.

In 2020 we launched ‘Shorts at Home’, a series of short films presented online using Vimeo’s Video on Demand service as a means to continue our mission to promote and celebrate and promote Canadian filmmakers and films in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The films for this series are curated by the OCanFilmFest Board of Directors, the selections are non-competitive and are scheduled to run between the annual festival screenings. In 2021, we extended our artist fee policy to the 'Shorts at Home' selections. In February 2022, we launched a second series, 'OCan Spotlight', which includes feature-length and short Canadian films, previously featured at the festival, now available to stream on YouTube, Vimeo and on streaming services like CBC Gem.

In 2022, we launched a companion blog, film613.ca. With a mandate to build engagement and community among film fans in the Ottawa / Outaouais area, the blog consists of film reviews, filmmaking and film promotion tips, and articles related to film and film appreciation contributed by volunteers.

OCanFilmFest proudly accepts entries on FilmFreeway, the world’s #1 way to enter film festivals and creative contests.