

‘The Wild Robot’ Earns Three Oscar Nominations, ‘Flow’ Is Nominated Twice
It is a big day for animated films at the Oscars, with Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot earning three nominations and Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow picking up two nominations at the 97th annual Academy Awards, set to take place on Sunday, March 2.
The Dreamworks Animation film The Wild Robot was not only nominated in the animated feature category, but also for best sound (Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo, Leff Lefferts) and original score (Kris Bowers). The Latvian-led European co-production Flow was nominated in both the animated feature and international feature film categories.
Besides The Wild Robot and Flow, three other films round out the animated feature category: Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out 2, Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail, and Aardman Animations’ Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl. It’s an excellent group of films, though it could hardly be called a surprise. Although 31 films qualified for the category, this same group of films has been nominated repeatedly this season.
The same group of five films was also nominated for the upcoming Critics Choice Award. At the Golden Globes, all fives film were nominated plus Moana 2, while the BAFTAs nominated four of these films minus Memoir of a Snail.
Although the nominees are not a surprise, it will be interesting to watch and see who wins. Flow, a dialogue-free $3.7 million production that originated out of Latvia, has been on an awards tear, winning loads of critics association awards as well as the Golden Globe, largely locking out the big-budget studio movies. Despite the studio-friendly history of the animated feature category at the Oscars, it would be logical to call the film the front-runner in the category.
Its staunchest competitor at this point is The Wild Robot, which has won most of the critics association awards that Flow has not. If a big-studio film were to win, this Dreamworks title would be the one to do it. Dreamworks is long overdue for an Oscar, not having won the category since 2006 when it was awarded for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
The shorts category is as unpredictable as ever. The five nominees were selected from these fifteen shortlisted films. Among the shortlist were three previously nominated directors in the category (Torill Kove, Don Hertzfeldt, Dice Tsutsumi), none of whom were nominated this year.
Another notable stat: French film distributor Miyu is behind three of this year’s nominated shorts: Beautiful Men, Wander to Wonder, and Yuck! When was the last time that three films from the same distributor were nominated in this category? One would likely have to look back decades to find an example of this, but something like this hasn’t happened often in the modern era.
Also notable is the nomination for the Iranian film In the Shadow of the Cypress. A short from Iran was nominated in the animation category for only the first time last year. Now, for the second time in two years, an Iranian short has ended up among the final five. The country, long recognized on the international stage for its live-action feature films, is increasingly become a force on the animation circuit.
Outside of the animation categories, another notable contender is the documentary feature nominee Porcelain War, which features animated segments created by BluBlu Studios in Warsaw, Poland. For more about the film, see our earlier coverage on Cartoon Brew.
Here are the nominees in all of the major animation-related categories.
Animated Feature
- Flow, Nominees to be determined
- Inside Out 2, Kelsey Mann and Mark Nielsen
- Memoir of a Snail, Adam Elliot and Liz Kearney
- Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Nominees to be determined
- The Wild Robot, Chris Sanders and Jeff Hermann
Animated Short Film
- Beautiful Men, Nicolas Keppens and Brecht Van Elslande
- In the Shadow of the Cypress, Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi
- Magic Candies, Daisuke Nishio and Takashi Washio
- Wander to Wonder, Nina Gantz and Stienette Bosklopper
- Yuck!, Loïc Espuche and Juliette Marquet
Visual Effects
- Alien: Romulus, Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin, Shane Mahan
- Better Man, Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs
- Dune: Part Two, Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, Gerd Nefzer
- Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story, Rodney Burke
- Wicked, Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk, Paul Corbould