Oct 25, 2024

2025 Academy Award Nominee: “Wonder to Wonder” Director Nina Ganz

Welcome to Cartoon Brew's spotlight series highlighting animated shorts that have made the cut for the 2025 Academy Awards.

Today we present “Wonder to Wonder” by Dutch filmmaker Nina Ganz. This short has repeatedly qualified for the Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film at SXSW and won the International Short Film Grand Prix at Anima Brussels. The Oscar nominees for animated shorts will be introduced over the next month and a half until voting begins in mid-December.

There are several ways for a film to qualify for the award: theatrical release, winning a specific award at a festival eligible for the Academy Awards, or winning a gold, silver, or bronze award in the animation or alternative/experimental category at the 2024 Student Academy Awards.

“Wanda and the Colossus” follows the lives of three small humans in a vintage television series. Left alone in a decaying studio after the creators die, they gradually starve to death as they continue to record episodes for their fans.

“Cartoon Brew/Wanda and the Colossus” is ambitious in terms of production techniques. 9]

Nina Ganz: When I started working on “Wanda and the Colossus,” the big difference from my graduation project, “Edmond,” was that I had the opportunity to work on many large productions. So I gained the confidence to work on large co-productions, and I was able to communicate my vision for the film to a scattered team in four different countries that I had never worked with before.

But of course there were many challenges. Because of the life-size props used in the studio, the puppets had to be a certain size to work, and they were much smaller than typical stop-motion puppets. This presented many challenges, especially during the production process. In order to achieve the various facial expressions of the dolls, the faces had to be 3D printed, which was something we had never done before. [Teeth were missing, eyelids disappeared into the printer, and sometimes the dolls looked like zombies. These problems were fixed close to the deadline, so we didn't get a chance to test it, but luckily it worked out very well.

Another hapk was that the animation studio went bankrupt a week before filming was to begin and sold off all their equipment.

What attracted you to this story and concept and why did you take on the role of director? I enjoyed thinking about how these miniature people would survive without a father figure to take care of them. I was curious about how they got their food, where they slept, and how they showered. Furthermore, I was fascinated by their state of mind. Especially if all they knew was the world their Creator had created for them.

When I was working on the final version of the script, I lost a family member and learned that everyone has a different way of dealing with grief. This experience greatly influenced the script and gave me the opportunity to approach this heavy subject using humor and absurdity.

What did you learn about the production, filmmaking, creative aspects, or subject matter through the experience of making this film? Collaboration with the actors took the film to a new level. The theme music for the children's show was also important and needed to embody the show in the 70s and 80s. Fortunately, the composer, Terence Dunn, lived in that era and was able to recreate it quite accurately. He was also associated with the Brighton Festival Choir, so we approached their youth choir as well.

I came across Ray Harryhausen's work eight years ago and was inspired by his use of stop motion and live action. I think it has stood the test of time, and while it may not look completely realistic, there is a certain nostalgia that really fit the idea of the film.

As for the visual style, we wanted to create a TV show that felt completely authentic, so we researched a lot of old shows like “The Sooty Show” and “Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood” where the human host interacts with a puppet. This research had a big influence on the visual style of the show. And behind the scenes, I wanted to see the harsh realities of their daily lives.