About OCan
Our Mission
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.
Our Vision
We believe in programming and content that provides Ottawa audiences with entertaining and high-quality independent films, information, activities and events. Our annual 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.
Sponsorships, 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.
Our Approach to Programming
OCan is a registered chairity 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.
OCan is an IMDB qualifying festival, and is listed among qualifying festivals for the Canadian Screen Awards by the Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television.
Our History
The Ottawa Canadian Film Festival (OCan) is an evolution of the Treepot Film Festival, independent filmmaker Jith Paul’s series of public screenings that showcased 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. He wanted to further promote independent filmmakers and their work to larger and broader audiences, in a more formalized, sustainable structure. The result is the OCan 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.
Annual Festival Screenings
We host annual in-person festival screenings at the Bytowne Cinema in Ottawa in November. The 9th annual festival took place from November 6-8, 2025.
Other Activities and Presentations
In addition to our annual screenings, OCanFilmFest programs a number of events including curated online and in-person screenings and fundraising events in collaboration with local filmmakers and other festivals.
Launched in 2024, the OCan Newsletter an email digest of articles, news, events, fundraisers, and links related to Canadian film and filmmakers, arriving in subscribers' inboxes about once a month.
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 were curated by the OCan Board of Directors and 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. This series has also been featured in numerous National Canadian Film Day initiatives.
In 2022, OCan launched a companion blog, film613.ca with a mandate to build engagement and community among film fans in the Ottawa / Outaouais area. The blog was relaunched in 2025, when it was transferred to Treepot Media. With content curated by OCan Co‑founder Jith Paul, the blog blends commissioned and volunteer-produced articles on film, television and the creative arts.
We highlight feature-length and short films previously featured at the festival, now available on YouTube, Vimeo or popular streaming platforms like CBC Gem, and Tubi on the OCan Spotlight page.
From time to time, the board curates and spotlights locally produced content in a series called OCan Presents. Most recently, we presented episodes from two locally-produced web series, 'Chateau Laurier' and 'No Regrets' at the Bytowne Cinema in 2023.
