Dec 17, 2018

Academy Awards Shortlist for Animated Short Films Excludes Most of 2018's Best Films

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has announced the 10 shortlisted animated short films that will advance to the voting process for the 91st Academy Awards.

The 10 films are listed below in alphabetical order by title:

The shortlist and nominees will now be voted on by the members of the Short Films and Animated Feature Films Division. Nominations will be announced on Tuesday, January 22, 2019.

The list is full of entertaining and cute films, but weak to reflect the state of contemporary short animation production; Cartoon Brew recently asked 10 industry-recognized short film experts (film programmers, critics, journalists, festival Artistic Directors) on the best short films in the Academy's short film slate, and there was a wide gulf between what the short film community sees as useful animation and what the Academy voters chose for this short list.

None of the top three films selected by our expert group, Boris Labbé's "La chute," Reka Buksi's "Solar Walk," or Nienke Deutsch's "Bloeistraat 11," made the Academy's short list. Of the top six films selected by our experts, only one film, Trevor Jimenez's "Weekends," was selected.

Another interesting statistic: Six of the ten films on the Academy's shortlist were never selected by any of our ten experts. Five of those six (Age of Sail, Bao, Bird Karma, Bilby, and One Small Step) were produced by California companies or by crews with strong ties to California industry. There is no denying the role that being part of the California animation industry plays in the Academy Awards voting process.

And for those who would like to argue that our panel of experts is wrong, here is another statistic: of the four films produced by California companies - Age of Sail, Bao, Bilby, and Bird Karma - that are eligible for Academy Award consideration None of the films have won awards at traditional film festivals. All four of these films were shown to the public in L.A. County for a fee. All of the other nominees in the category qualified for the award by winning at the festival.

On the plus side, none of this year's nominees in the animation category had a director arrested or charged with rape.

Pictured at top: "Bird Karma" by William Salazar.