These Animated Shorts Are Nominated For An Oscar

If your favorite season is awards season, this article is for you. And if you’re a fan of animation in general, this article is also for you. We’re taking the time of analyzing and summarizing the nominees for the Best Animated Short category for this year’s Academy Awards. Despite what we’re used to seeing in other major categories filled with household names, this particular category is an opportunity for upcoming creators and studios to showcase their Oscar-worthy projects hoping for them to get the recognition they usually deserve but rarely get.

This year’s selection is filled with darlings from the indie world, dealing with topics like the Holocaust, war, gender restrictions, incest and mortality, remind us all that animation is a serious and valid medium to use to tell all kinds of stories. The selection also covers CG, 2D animation, stop-motion and mixed-media, so this promises to be a fun ride.

WAR IS OVER!

Inspired by the music of John & Yoko’: This short, inspired by the popular protest song ‘Happy Xmas (War is Over)’ from John Lennon & Yoko Ono, is about a chess game played across enemy lines of an alternative World War I. Produced by Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon, the short’s 2D look was inspired by illustrators Normal Rockwell and J.C. Leyendecker.

LETTER TO A PIG

This French/Israeli production won the Animation Is Film Festival Grand Prize already, and it uses both 2D and live action with heavy line drawings to tell the story of a Holocaust survivor, speaking to a classroom about the thank you letter he wrote to the pig that saved his life during this time.

PACHYDERME

A French animated short that combines CG and 2D animation. This one is more dark and poetic, with a fairy tale-like vibe, centered around a young girl and her feeling trapped and afraid of spending the holidays in the countryside with her grandparents, taking her to snowy weather during the summer where she must also face her inner demons.

NINETY-FIVE SENSES

From Jared Hess, the director of ‘Napoleon Dynamite’, this 2D short “is an ode to the body’s five senses, delivered by an elderly man (Tim Blake Nelson), who has spent most of his life in prison and is about to be executed for a heinous crime. Now he ponders fond memories devoted to each sense, conveyed through a different hand-drawn style”, according to IndieWire.

OUR UNIFORM

This Iranian short is about the clothing conventions imposed on young Iranian girls, using stop-motion, 2D and projections on real fabric as its techniques, which makes it really interesting just by that alone. Our lead unfolds her school memories through the wrinkles of her old uniform, which is the starting point for the story.

Predictions are saying that ‘War Is Over!’ is the favorite to take home the win, and it kinda makes sense if you think about how the process of winning an Oscar is. Nominees need to campaign for it, and campaign HARD, making sure they’re noticed by the members of the Academy, and this take time and resources, and with names like Yoko Ono and Lennon attached to the project, it could be easy for them to win this one… but we also love underdog stories, so we can expect a close race due to the fact that all of the nominated shorts offer outstanding animation, diverse techniques and compelling stories, which are a perfect combination.