Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences will find out next week what animated shorts have qualified for the animated short category of the Academy Awards.
However, Cartoon Brew has been tracking the category all year long, and we present below an exclusive list of 60+ films that are known to have qualified for the animated short category. These films will be viewed and voted upon by members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch between mid-October through Thanksgiving, at which point the Academy will publicly announce a shortlist of 10 films. Those 10 films will then be voted on again to determine the final five Oscar nominees.
There are three different ways to qualify for the animated short film category:
The film must have won a qualifying award at a competitive film festival. The list of film festivals and the specific awards at those festivals that can qualify a film can be found in this pdf.
The picture must have been publicly exhibited for paid admission in a commercial motion picture theater in Los Angeles County for a run of at least seven consecutive days with at least one screening a day prior to public exhibition or distribution by any non-theatrical means. The picture also must appear in the theater listings along with the appropriate dates and screening time(s).
The film must have won a Gold, Silver or Bronze Medal award in the Academy’s 2017 Student Academy Awards competition in the Animation, Narrative, Alternative or Foreign Film category.
Some caveats: Even though all of the films in our list are technically qualified, it is not known if the filmmakers actually took the extra step of entering their films into the Oscar competition. Also, because of the public exhibition option, other films may have qualified without our knowledge. The entire list of qualified films won’t be known until the Academy presents the eligible films to their membership.
Despite these unknowns, this list is the most accurate public document at this date and offers a valuable look at what films will compete for the award this year. Cartoon Brew believes it’s important to get out as much information as possible about this category because traditionally there hasn’t been as much attention paid to this category as to other Oscar categories.
Animated shorts certainly deserve a more careful look. These films are at the vanguard of innovation in our artform. If you want fresh concepts, storytelling approaches, styles, and techniques in animation, this year’s line-up of excellent projects provides all of that and more.
More will be written about the contenders when the Academy’s long-list becomes available to its members, but for now, we present this preliminary list of qualified films (in alphabetical order) so that animation fans may familiarize themselves with the likely contenders.
A Dad – Robert Cambrinus (Austria)
A Love Story – Anushka Kishani Naanayakkara (UK)
Among the Black Waves – Anna Budanova (Russia)
An Island – Rory Byrne (Ireland)
Call of Cuteness – Brenda Lien (Germany)
Cerulia – Sofía Carrillo (Mexico)
Coin Operated – Nicholas Arioli (USA)
Confino – Nico Bonomolo (Italy)
Cop Dog – Bill Plympton (USA)
Cradle – Devon Manney (USA)
Darrel – Marc Briones, Alan Carabantes (Spain)
Dear Basketball – Glen Keane (USA)
E-delivery – Young Gul Cho (USA)
Ein Aus Weg – Simon Steinhorst, Hannah Lotte Stragholz (Germany)
