Animated Short Film Oscar Nominees, Ranked

Diving deep on this year’s contenders.

Many view the short film awards as Oscars ballot breakers, a vestige of mid-century exhibition practices, and/or dead air on the lengthy telecast. And while these categories occasionally showcase emerging talent or exciting innovations in the artform, I do tend to find the shorts nominees to be somewhat of a slog. But there’s no doubt that the Academy Awards grant their makers the largest platform possible, both inside and outside of the industry.

Of the three shorts categories, Live Action Short Film, Documentary Short Subject, and Animated Short Film, the latter is the most widely viewed and discussed, at least amongst people I know. Anyone who still ties animation with children’s fare will be quickly disproven, but this category still tends to be the most digestible.

This year, 88 titles qualified in the Animated Short Film category, whether by a one-week theatrical release, winning an award at certain film festivals, or receiving a Student Academy Award. From there, members of the Animation and Short Films Branches selected a shortlist of fifteen works, and from there voted for the final five nominees. Every member of the Academy is able to vote for the winner, if they so choose.

I took the time to see all fifteen of those shortlisted films in advance of the nominations announcement. The feature-length category tends to be dominated by 3D animation made by big American studios. Here, the Academy members preferred more old-school methods, at least for this year. Only two of those fifteen shortlisted shorts employed 3D animation, both of which were student films that are best considered as technical demo reels and were not nominated¹. Likewise, just two pre-nominees were produced in the US, neither of which were eventually nominated.

Within the shortlist, there was a mix between experiments in technique and more contained storytelling. The best animated short films, in my mind, can accomplish both. Here are my brief impressions on the nominees, plus three other films that I think deserved a nomination.

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Ranking the Nominees

In order of least to most favorite. The Oscar-nominated animated shorts will be coming to US cinemas on February 14, though three are currently available to rent on Vimeo.

In the Shadow of the Cypress

2D. Nominees: Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi

Living in a house on a secluded beach, with a shipwrecked barge anchored in the sea, a man confronts his post-traumatic stress order while his daughter tries to save a beached whale. The minimalist short film, which comes without dialogue, was made by the Iranian filmmaking team of Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, and they faced many challenges in putting their film together. A lot of Iran’s animation talent had fled the country, sanctions hobbled the ability to secure financing, and one of the directors had health issues, leading to a lengthy production process. The resulting work can be a bit opaque, but the metaphor of man’s pyrrhic fight against nature representing a psychological battle can certainly resonate.

Beautiful Men

Stop-motion. Nominees: Nicolas Keppens and Brecht Van Elslande

Three brothers travel from Belgium to Istanbul to get hair transplants. (Apparently, the Turkish hair plug industry is booming.) Director Nicolas Keppens hones in on the fragility of the male psyche, the resultant simmering rage. It stems from anxieties about the aging body; the men are balding, one is worried he may have testicular cancer. Quite a few scenes with (flaccid) claymation dongs. But a new head of hair doesn’t make you a new man. This atmospheric, darkly comic film is a lesson to middle-aged men everywhere that, contrary to what Lady Gaga says, you are not your hair. (Though this is easy for me to say, as my family does not have a history of balding.)

The Letterboxd crowd does not like this at all, which means it'll probably win. (Good rule of thumb: think of what the most basic Academy member would like the most, and that’s a solid prediction to make for what short film gets the Oscar.)

Magic Candies

Stop-motion. Nominees: Daisuke Nishio and Takashi Washio

This Japanese claymation was produced by Toei Animation and helmed by Daisuke Nishio, who also directed Dragon Ball Z (yes, the entire series). It is an adaptation of a picture book by Korean author Baek Hee-na. A lonely young boy named Dong-Dong is sold a bag of candies, and when he puts a gumball in his mouth, trippy things start to happen. The boy’s first psychedelic experience isn’t too bad. The couch pleads for him to remove the TV remote wedged in its side and requests that his dad stop farting so much. Subsequent candies veer away from furniture animism: he has a pleasant conversation with his dog, can read the thoughts of his overbearing father, and even speak with the departed. Throughout these interactions, Dong-Dong learns to connect with everything around him and overcomes his shyness. It’s a charming story with a good message for children. It reminds me of the wonderful shorts that Disney and Pixar typically play before their theatrical features. But there were no shorts that preceded either Inside Out 2 and Moana 2. What’s up with that?

Yuck!

2D. Nominees: Loïc Espuche and Juliette Marquet

Do you remember the point where, as a kid, you went from thinking kissing was gross to wanting to be kissed? French animator Loïc Espuche explores what happens when that yuck turns into yum. At a campground during a summer holiday, a group of kids bond over their shared revulsion of such public displays of affection, shouting “yuck” whenever they’d see lips touch. Get used to it kiddos: everyone at this camp seem to be caught in the throes of passion! But one boy, Leo, begins to feel prepubescent stirrings of desire for Lucy, a girl who just might like him back. Will peer pressure thwart these nascent yearnings, preventing them from having un petit bisou? This whimsical film doesn’t break much ground on a technical level, but I was charmed by this coming of age yarn. This pink-toned film boasts an atmospheric 80’s style synth score by Aliénor Doublet.

The title of this film brings to mind two good songs: “Yuck,” — “by Charli XCX,” as Rachel Sennott put it when announcing the nominees — and “UGH!” by The 1975.

Wander to Wonder

Stop-motion. Nominees: Nina Gantz and Stienette Bosklopper

Of all the nominees, this is the one that would most likely be encountered on Adult Swim. This super weird, super rad film comes from the demented mind of Dutch animator Nina Gantz. It begins with a VHS recording of an old children’s TV program called Wander to Wonder, in which a kindly old man interacts with three claymation humanoid bears. The reclusive creator of the show dies unexpectedly, leaving the show's characters — who are actually very small people wearing fursuits — to survive on their own in a secluded cabin. While his corpse decomposes, they first subsist on jarred pickles and eventually dead flies, and a video camera documents their descent into madness. It’s as if Ray Harryhausen directed a Charlie Kaufman script, filtered through the offbeat analog nostalgia of Brigsby Bear. Among the cast is British actor Toby Jones, the voice of Dobby himself.

If I had a vote for the Oscars, this strange tale would be my choice! Once you’ve seen these films, let me know what your pick would be.

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Bonus: three shorts that should have been nominated

These shortlisted animated shorts (that’s a mouthful) didn’t land a nomination, but I wish they had.

A Crab in the Pool

2D. Freely available on Vimeo.

Somewhere in Québec, in a not so nice neighborhood, a young boy and his teenage sister walk to the local swimming pool. Surreal elements that recall Fantastic Planet and grungy Beavis and Butthead character designs suggest goofy fun. But it reveals itself to be a surprisingly affecting story about how siblings, no matter how much they fight, will always love each other, and need each other to get through life’s hardships. A very touching, personal tale from Canadian duo Alexandra Myotte and Jean-Sébastien Hamel that manages to cover a lot of ground in an economic runtime.

Me

2D/3D mix. Available for rent on Vimeo.

The much-lauded Don Hertzfeldt (The World of Tomorrow, It’s Such a Beautiful Day) returns with one of his weirdest works yet, the title of which is unfortunately associated with Taylor Swift’s worst song. The premise seems straightforward, at first: amidst a decaying world, a father abandons his family to pursue the invention of a novel communications machine. Perhaps it’s a metaphor for the AI bubble, critiquing the industry not just for its massive consumption of energy but also of human intellect. With all the problems on this planet, why are our brightest minds dedicated to programming chatbots? The fake film scratches and tints suggest the most primordial forms of animation, to contrast with this of the moment premise.

It gets much weirder and stranger from there, and I won’t reveal exactly what happens. Me winds up a bit too aggressively avant-garde for most tastes, as evidenced by its lack of an Oscar nomination.

The Wild-Tempered Clavier

2D/Stop-motion mix. Streaming on Kanopy.

Never seen anything like this! Very unique form that hearkens back to the earliest days of animation, when artists drew directly on 35mm film. Made with ingenuity by Russian-born, Berlin-based artist Anna Samo, who noticed that a roll of toilet paper bears more than a passing resemblance to a reel of film. She paints watercolors onto each square, turning it into a frame, and then stop-motion photography turns it into a movie. A very funny idea that’s playfully executed. The abstract forms of the first feel reels/rolls eventually become more figurative, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine influences her ideas. As the title of the film suggests, it’s all soundtracked by the immortal Bach. In an era where the most widely-seen animations seem frictionless, this is a reminder of the medium’s handmade origins, and the endangered art of physically making a movie.

1. The 3D shorts are Au Revoir Mon Monde and Origami. The latter, a tribute to the Japanese art of folding paper very precisely, is very impressive when you consider that, per 22-year-old director Kei Kanamori, “everything seen can be folded from an actual square of paper.”