The countdown to the 95th Academy Awards is on! This year, we thought we’d do something a little different and explore some of our favourite categories.
The Best Animated Short Film category was introduced in 1932 as Short Subjects, Cartoons, a name it retained until 1970. Following Flowers and Trees (1932), the first decade of awards was dominated by Walt Disney before Fred Quimby (of Tom and Jerry fame) started to take the crown. After briefly being known as Short Subjects, Animated Films, the category took its present name in 1974 and it remains almost forty years later.
With a combined total of 63 nominations and 20 wins, Disney and Pixar may hold their records for a while. Yet in recent years, topical films like Hair Love, If Anything Happens I Love You, and The Windshield Wiper have changed the possibilities of what the short form can be. Indeed, those big studios don’t even get a look-in this year, perhaps indicative that much of their short content is now debuting exclusively on streaming sites.
The five nominees this year couldn’t be more different, with entries from the US, Canada, Australia and Portugal. Let’s take a look.
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
Australian filmmaker Lachlan Pendragon represents us in a category where we have historically done well. In the tradition of Aardman and Australia’s own Adam Elliot, this fourth-wall breaking short is wickedly clever in its approach to painstakingly detailed stop-motion animation. It follows Neil, an office worker who comes to believe that the world he inhabits isn’t real, and he may just be a character in an animated film. It’s a fun spin on The Matrix-esque genre — not to mention office comedies — and it might might a good companion to fellow Oscar-nominee Everything Everywhere All at Once. At times, one can’t help that we’ve seen it all before, as if Pendragon isn’t entirely sure where to end it. Still, it definitely signals a new voice on the animation scene and exciting things for the future.
The Flying Sailor
Directors Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis take their inspiration from the Halifax Explosion 1917, where a sailor was reportedly thrown 4km before landing relatively unharmed wearing nothing but his boots. Using experimental combinations of CG animation, stock footage and hand-painted elements, there is a lot to admire about the technique the Canadian animators have employed here. It switches from an almost comedic throwback opening to a whole existential float through the cosmos itself. It may not be for all tastes, but it’s certainly a complex labour of love.
Ice Merchants
João Gonzalez’s animated short has already made history as the first ever Portuguese animation to be awarded at the Cannes Film Festival. It focuses on a father and son who parachute from their clifftop house and into the local village each day, selling ice to the locals.
Although animated digitally, the striking style looks hand-drawn, almost as if the pen and ink marks are still drying on the page. The crafted lines and simple colour spectrum is all that is needed to make these figures pop against the bleak winter background.
Without any dialogue, this intensely emotional piece about bonds of fathers and sons, loss, grief, isolation, and recovery is told as a simple storybook fable.
My Year of Dicks
If the award was Best Title of the Year, then this one might take it. Sara Gunnarsdóttir’s short, based on Pamela Ribon’s 2014 memoir Notes to Boys: And Other Things I Shouldn’t Share in Public, follows a 15-year-old girl in Houston in 1991 as she attempts to lose her virginity.
Grabbing our attention with one of the best titles of 2022, Gunnarsdóttir’s 25-minute film is wonderful. The different animation styles and to-camera mixed media pieces bring us an intimacy rarely seen in feature films, let alone contemporary animated shorts. It plays in the realms of comfortable nostalgia, like something Richard Linklater might put together but with fewer dudey dudes. Alternatively hilarious, heartfelt, cringey (in the best ways) and sweet, this is a highlight on any calendar year. Would love to see the concept expanded into a feature, but it works pretty well in this tight form.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
With the backing of the BBC and AppleTV+ — and the voices of Jude Coward Nicoll, Gabriel Byrne, Idris Elba and Tom Hollander as the titular characters — this is unquestionably the highest profile short of the category.
The animation is gorgeous, replicating Charlie Mackesy’s original illustrations entirely through a 2D pipeline. Indeed, there were over 120 artists involved in the process and the results are remarkable. As an animation fan, I have nothing but admiration for the technique.
So, it’s a shame that the rest all feels so familiar and obvious. From the design of the lead to his cake-obsessed worried optimist of a companion, one can’t help but think of Christopher Robin and a certain bear of very little brain.
Imitation is the highest form of flattery. So, if you like that aphorism, then this short is filled with them. At times, this feels like a greeting card or wholesome meme machine brought to life. Indeed, it was so heavy-handed that one can’t help but ponder if it was meant to be parody. If it wasn’t so damned earnest, that might be the case.
Or perhaps I’m just cynical and bitter. For a younger audience, it’s a gentle piece of positivity that reinforces the strength of communities that look out for each other. Told in storybook fashion, that’s easy to digest in a sea of information, this is sure to be a crowd-pleaser.
Catch the Oscar Shorts (animated and live-action) at cinemas 10,11 & 12 March.
Locations and session details at: https://shorts.tv/en/events/oscar-shorts-2023
