For the better part of this year, Cartoon Brew has been tracking the animated shorts that have qualified for the Academy Awards’ animated short category. This first-of-its-kind independent attempt to track the category is intended both as a resource for the animation community and an attempt to draw greater attention to the Academy’s oft-ignored animated shorts category, which is too frequently neglected (and disrespected) by the Academy’s general membership.

This year, 60 animated shorts qualified for the category. These films were screened for the Academy’s Short Films and Feature Animation Branch Reviewing Committees in Los Angeles and New York over the last couple weeks, and the Academy will soon announce the 10-film shortlist.

So, how’d our first-ever award tracker work out?

Out of the 60 films that qualified, Cartoon Brew correctly identified 46 of them in our tracker (77% of the films).

Below is the list of qualified shorts, which we obtained from those who attended the Academy screenings. We’ve marked the films that we were unable to identify in our tracker:

  • The Agony and the Ecstasy (not identified)
  • The Apple Tree (not identified)
  • Au Fil de l’Eau (On Flying Water)
  • Between Times
  • Carface
  • Dinner for Few
  • German Shepherd
  • Juan y la Nube (Juan and the Cloud)
  • Love in the Time of March Madness
  • An Object at Rest
  • Pineapple Calamari
  • Snowfall
  • Starlight
  • Storm Hits Jacket
  • Violet
  • Zoe
  • Castillo y el Armado
  • Grace Under Water
  • The Master
  • (Otto)
  • Sanjay’s Super Team
  • Still Born
  • Submarine Sandwich (not identified)
  • Voodoo Love Story (not identified)
  • Limbo Limbo Travel
  • We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
  • Aria for a Cow (not identified)
  • Chiaroscuro
  • Edmond
  • The Looking Planet (not identified)
  • Air-Mail (Messages dans l’Air)
  • Amélia & Duarte (not identified)
  • The Ballad of the Homeless
  • Bucko the Bull (not identified)
  • Walk the Dog (Dame mit Hund)
  • Driving
  • The Loneliest Stoplight
  • Loop Ring Chop Drink
  • My Home (not identified)
  • Oscar Wilde’s The Nightingale and the Rose
  • The Pride of Strathmoor
  • Soar
  • Stripy
  • Taking the Plunge
  • World of Tomorrow
  • Bear Story
  • 9:30 am
  • Prologue
  • The Sense of Touch
  • The Story of Percival Pilts
  • Taking Flight
  • Zimbo (not identified)
  • Load
  • Alex & Sylvia (not identified)
  • The Beautiful Forest (not identified)
  • Dissonance
  • Fink Forest Friends: The Invisible Hank (not identified)
  • Waves ’98
  • The Final Passage (not identified)
  • If I Was God

Also, by our count, at least nine films that qualified through festival wins didn’t submit their films into contention. Among these qualified films were winners of significant events including Cinanima, Oberhausen, Warsaw, Ottawa, Siggraph, and the New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival. It’s not clear why the filmmakers chose to not enter their films into competition, but some of them had the potential to be strong contenders. The films that qualified, but didn’t complete the Oscar qualification process (or were otherwise disqualified) are:

  • An Ode to Love
  • Citius, Altius, Fortius
  • Johnny Express
  • Small People with Hats
  • Soot (Fuligem)
  • Sound of My Soul
  • The Mill at Calder’s End
  • The Night of the Elephant
  • The Tide Keeper
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Amid Amidi

Amid Amidi is Cartoon Brew's Publisher and Editor-at-large.

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