Dec 20, 2021

Final Predictions for the Academy Awards 2022 Animated Shortlist

Tomorrow, the shortlist of animated shorts competing for next year's Oscar will be unveiled. It will be our first insight into the Academy's tastes this year. In anticipation, we've tried to guess what they'll pick.

Predicting this category is a pretty inexact science, as it gets relatively little attention, and the shortlist isn't preceded by a steady run of buzz-building awards as feature categories are. There's a reason bookies don't take bets on shorts at this stage.

With that in mind, we've gone ahead and picked the films we think stand the best chance of being shortlisted (out of the 84 that qualified). Our choices are based on factors like the film's exposure so far (whether through marketing or festival hype and honors) and the prominence in Hollywood of the studio and director. The Academy's voting record suggests these things are important. Quality is a factor here, but perhaps not the most important one, and in any case it is more subjective than others.

We've chosen 15 shorts, because that is the new maximum number of shortlisted films. In previous years, the list was capped at ten. The 15 will be whittled down to five nominees, which will be announced on February 8, 2022. The Oscars ceremony will follow on March 27.

Note: there is no shortlist for animated features, 26 of which have qualified this year. But there are for documentary and international feature, and it will be worth seeing whether the hotly tipped Flee makes it to either. If so, its distributors may opt to focus its campaign around that category, rather than animated feature. There is also a shortlist for vfx.

Here is our list, in alphabetical order, with directors' names:

Images at top, left to right: “Blush,” “Robin Robin,” “Twenty Something”