Best Animated Short 2019 - The Shortlist

Well, it's been a while since I posted. I haven't posted anything since Richard Williams's passing back in August. I didn't even post when Cartoon Brew posted the list of films that they know have qualified for the Oscar. I know I had posted about the longlist in the past, but it took forever to put together, and it really didn't present anything new. And besides, how can I top Alex Dudok de Wit, the son of Oscar winner Michael Dudok de Wit? I suppose I could have made a post where I linked to that page and said "Hey, Cartoon Brew had published a list of films they knew had qualified for the Oscar," but I didn't.

Anyways, the Academy has long announced the shortlist of films that will be progressing for further consideration for the Academy Award nomination. They had previously made the list known late in November, but recently they have waited until mid-December to announce the shortlist for multiple categories, including Best Animated Short. This year's Shortlist Day happened to fall on Monday, December 16. Alas, I was away from my computer all day so I could not make this post to preview the ten films. So the post will go up a day late. Obviously Cartoon Brew had already made a post and given their two cents, but I suppose I will do the same.

As you may or may not know, short films qualify for the Oscar through winning festivals or going for weeklong public screenings at Academy-approved theaters. Films can qualify only if they meet these criteria before going online, so many times the filmmakers would hold off on posting the films until after the festival runs have finished. Therefore usually only a handful of films are actually made available online. Last year all of the films were posted prior to the Oscar ceremony, but only half of them were up by Shortlist Day. This year only half of the films were posted in advance. I don't know if the other half would go up eventually, but we can preview all of the films for now.

Daughter (Dcera)

Daughter is a film by Czech animator Daria Kashcheeva. It is supposedly about a little girl in eastern Europe suffered considerable distress while being raised by her emotionally distant father. The memories remain with her even as she grows up, and she finds it rather difficult to go back to confront these memories and the person that was present in all of them, even if it means that it might be too late. Emotions are a common theme in many films, and they are portrayed differently in different films. With Daughter director Kashcheeva decided to use more dynamic techniques to show the emotionally charged nature of the film's conflicts, such as the use of hand-held cameras and low camera angles. I can't imagine how difficult that would be with stop-motion puppets, painted by hand. It seems like a lot of work, especially for a 15-minute film, but alas all we have are the trailer.




Hair Love

This film had made the rounds online recently. It was originally a Kickstarter project by filmmaker Matthew A. Cherry where it raised over $300,000, but eventually Sony Picture Animations came on board and helped co-produce the film. Hair Love is also about a father's love for his child, but it is done from an African American point of view, given the fact that Cherry is black. I'll confess I'm not African American and aren't entirely well versed in their culture, but it seems like their hair has its own unique quality that requires different forms of hairstyling. You'll have to go elsewhere to understand the details and intricacies of African American hairstyling, but I think it's great that we have a film done from an African American point of view. Too often those projects are just overlooked, ignored, or even worse criticized. It also helps that Hair Love is heartwarming with fun characters and pleasing animation.




He Can't Live Without Cosmos

Back in 2015 (well technically 2014 but it qualified for the 2015 Oscars), Russian animator Konstatin Bronzit, made a film titled We Can't Live Without Cosmos, about two cosmonauts training for an epic space journey. The film was very well received and was even nominated for an Oscar. Several years later he comes out with another film, He Can't Live Without Cosmos, about a boy living in the Soviet Union and his dreams of space. I don't know yet if the two are linked in story, but apparently the two films do focus on the human connections and how important they are in dreams of space. I do know from the trailer that the animation has become much more detailed and complex than Lavatory Lovestory, Bronzit's first Oscar nomination. While the simplicity of Lavatory Lovestory was probably partially a design choice, it still doesn't change the fact that He Can't Live Without Cosmos would be a much bigger production.




Hors Piste

Evidently Hors Piste is the French term for backcountry skiing. (According to Google translate Hors Piste translates literally to Off Road.) That makes sense because this French film is about a pair of mountain rescuers and their mission to rescue a hors piste skier with disastrous results. The plot of the film somewhat similar to 2008's This Way Up: a tale about two main characters and their mission to transport a person from point A to point B, but with many missteps along the way. And yet Hors Piste is a lot more fun. While This Way Up has a macabre feel to it, Hors Piste is infused with an 80s feel and a synthy vibe. In fact Hors Piste is easily the funniest of the five films that are available in full, full of absurdist slapstick. It's not exactly the deepest of all films, but sometimes a little bit of humor can go a long way amongst all of the artistic works about life and suffering. Sometimes it leads to a one-joke film getting nominated, such as A Single Life or the infamous The Crunch Bird.



Kitbull

In recent years there have been several independent films made by animators for large studios that have gone for Oscar nominations, films such as The Dam Keeper, Borrowed Time, One Small Step and Weekends. Studios have come to encourage this exploration, and Pixar in particular had opened up the SparkShorts program. It gave animators a chance to spend six months and a certain budget to make their own short film. The first three films were released on YouTube in February of this year and were celebrated for their depiction of more mature themes than other Pixar shorts. They were also given theatrical releases to earn Oscar qualification. Of the three only Kitbull managed to make it onto the shortlist. It also challenges Hair Love for the title of the most widely viewed film on the shortlist. This heartwarming tale of a stray cat and its evolving relationship to an abused dog touched the hearts of millions of viewers. I was struck by the hand-drawn animation style and the rather realistic depiction of the animals.




Memorable

Memorable is a short film by French animator Bruno Collet. It depicts the experiences of an elderly painter named Louis and the way the world seems to change around him. While it's not explicitly stated, but Louis is beginning to suffer from dementia and everything he knows is going to become completely different. Memorable won the short film award at the highly prestigious Annecy International Film Festival, one of the top film festivals for animation. There had been a long link between Annecy winners and Oscars, although Memorable is the first short film winner to make the shortlist since The Head Vanishes, incidentally another film about the ravages of dementia. (I will note that Revolting Rhymes won the Annecy for Films Produced for Television and got an Oscar nomination.) I can't really say much about the film itself because the excerpt is only available in French without subtitles, but the stop-motion design and the depiction of warping reality reminds me a lot of Closed Mondays.




Mind My Mind

Autism spectrum disorder has become somewhat of a contentious topic within both the psychiatric community and society in general. While the former debate the precise definition, the latter seem to treat the condition with apprehension and scorn. Much of that seems to come from the retracted study by the journal Lancet linking vaccines with autism, which lent considerable ammunition towards the anti-vaccine crowd. Meanwhile people with autism spectrum disorders are left somewhat on the wayside, haunted by groups that fail to understand their difficulties with social communication. Mind My Mind is an attempt to bridge that gap, portraying the life of a higher-functioning autistic man named Chris and his attempts to begin a relationship with a zoologist named Gwen. The inner workings of his mind is portrayed by a little man who gives Chris the social cues to advance in life. I have no idea how accurate the portrayal is, but any attempts at providing more information to the lay public is always helpful.




The Physics of Sorrow

Theodore Ushev, the Bulgarian-born, Canadian-based graphic designer and animator has become one of the most respected artists in the animation industry. His trilogy of films about the 20th century concluded with Gloria Victoria, an acclaimed abstract film that made it onto the shortlist, although it failed to secure a nomination. He did make it into the nominations circle with Blind Vaysha, a film based off of a short story by Bulgarian writer Georgi Gospodinov. For his latest film, Ushev had once again turned to the writing of Gospodinov, this time tackling the novel The Physics of Sorrow. The film and the book talk about the life of a boy who jumps through the experiences of others, and through that exposes the life of Bulgarians under Communist rule, or something like that. Besides the challenge of adapting such a fluid work, Ushev doubles the intensity by using encaustic painting, or painting using heated beeswax. This gives the film a look very much reminiscent of paint-on-glass films, but I'm sure it presents a different set of challenges.




Sister (妹妹)

Sister tells the tale of a Chinese man as he looks back at his childhood in the 1990s, primarily about the involvement of his annoying younger sister. Of course, like many other films there is more to this story than meets the eye. Sister is a film by Siqi Song, a Chinese animator currently based in the US. With this film she takes a look at her native country, particularly a controversial policy that was present for over 35 years. In fact, one of the shortlisted films in the Best Documentary Feature had addressed this exact same issue. Sister is a rare film in which the entire film is presented in Mandarin Chinese. Last year's nominated films had strong Chinese influences, with Bao and One Small Step being dialogue-free films about the experiences of Chinese immigrants, while Weekends used a Mandarin Chinese song from Singapore on its soundtrack. Sister tells a distinctly Chinese tale using the Chinese language, while touching on themes that are universal. The film features a surprising amount of visual humor, and is done with characters that appear to be made with needle felting.




Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days

Portuguese animator Regina Pessoa had been making films about childhood for much of her career, including Tragic Story with Happy Ending, which had made the shortlist all the way back in 2006. For this Portuguese/French/Canadian co-production Pessoa goes back to her childhood to tell the story of her uncle Thomas, who had helped inspire her artistically amidst a rather turbulent childhood. Thomas was described as being a marginalized citizen, but it is pretty clear that he suffers from obsessive compulsive disorder, one of the most debilitating and most difficult psychiatric disorders to treat. Like many other mental health disorders, there are a lot of misunderstandings about OCD, and while the film isn't explicitly about Thomas's obsessions and compulsions, they feature prominently and gives a good look at the challenges that are faced by those afflicted with the condition. The film is drawn with what seems like charcoal on paper, although the pupil-less character design is a bit creepy.



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Well, these are the films on the shortlist. Cartoon Brew was more pleased with this list as it was largely made up of international productions, and included more of the films highly rated by industry veterans they polled. Two films that didn't make it were Poland's psychedelic Acid Rain as well as Italy's Egg.

Anyways, the Academy would now hold viewings of each of the ten shortlisted films, and any active or life member of the short film or feature animation branch can attend the film. They will vote for five films they feel deserve nominations, and those five would go on to compete for the Oscar. I've given up trying to predict the nominations, because I am not privy to the thought process of these filmmakers. All I can say is I hope the other five films are posted online sometime soon.