Best Animated Short - 2021: The Shortlist

It's that time of year. Earlier today the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released the shortlist of 10 different Oscar categories, including Best Documentary Feature, Best International Film, and our favorite category Best Animated Short. This means it's the time of year where I drag myself out of hibernation and take a look at the films that could join classics like A Greek Tragedy and Magoo's Puddle Jumper in the annals of films to win Best Animated Short. 

One big change for this year's race is the fact that 15 films are on the shortlist as opposed to ten in previous shortlists. I think this is a pretty good change, as it provides a larger list of films to explore (since nobody actually cares about all of the qualifying films, of which there were reportedly 84 this year). Plus, it seems like a tighter race with one of three films getting a nomination instead of just one of two.

Anyways, unfortunately I haven't really paid attention to any of the short films this year, so my knowledge on these 15 finalists are fairly limited, so let's explore them together!

Affairs of the Art

Joanna Quinn is a British animator who was previous nominated in this category for the family film Famous Fred. She also animated the Wife of Bath tale in the Oscar nominated The Canterbury Tales. However, she is best known for her films with collaborator Les Mills that feature the boisterous Beryl, from her first film Girls Night Out to Dreams and Desires - Family Ties which made it on the shortlist back in 2006. The latest Beryl adventure Affairs of the Art shows Beryl attempting to fulfill her artistic dreams while also exploring the idiosyncratic obsessions of the rest of her family including her sister Beverly and her son Colin. Affairs of the Art is one of the six shortlisted films made publicly available, this time through the generosity of The New Yorker. Of course, I'll give my full thoughts in a review if it gets a nomination.

Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman's Apprentice

The role of the indigenous people in modern society has become somewhat of a contentious point in recent years, especially in Canada as they deal with the finding of thousands of bodies on residential schools where indigenous children were sent. Beyond that the indigenous people have to deal with loss of cultural identity during the assimilation process. Zacharias Kunuk is an Inuk filmmaker whose 2001 film Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner was named the best Canadian film of all time at the Toronto International Film Festival a few years back. His latest film Angakusajaujuq is a stop-motion film about a shaman and her apprentice granddaughter as they try to save the life a young hunter. Needless to say, this would likely be the first in Inukitut to be nominated for an Oscar if it gets a nomination.

Bad Seeds (Mauviases Herbes)

No, this isn't the 1956 thriller about an evil young girl or even the 2018 French comedy that is available on Netflix. Instead, this is a film by the National Film Board of Canada about two carnivorous plants that change their appearances based on what they eat. The director Claude Cloutier previously made the shortlist back in 2015 with his film Carface (Autos Portraits), although it did not end up getting a nomination. Unfortunately, I still haven't seen the film, but here's hoping that the National Film Board of Canada would make it available pretty soon. They're usually pretty good about making their films available. The trailer sure makes it look pretty interesting.

Bestia

Bestia is a film by Chilean animator Hugo Covarrubias. Covarrubias's Chilean counterpart Gabrial Osorio Vargas had won the Best Animated Short Oscar for Bear Story. Both of these films were strongly influenced by the 1973 coup d'état and the reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet. Bear Story was an tale about how the coup had influenced the life of a family, done in an anthropomorphized manner. Meanwhile Bestia is about the life of a secret police agent and how her occupation affects her way of life. I have no idea what the actual film is about, but the stop motion animation with the porcelain character design is certainly interesting.

Boxballet (БоксБалет) 

Russian animation has a long history of triumph dating back to Lev Atamanov's The Snow Queen (which inspired Hayao Miyazaki) to the works of Yuri Norstein including Tale of Tales and Hedgehog in the Fog. More recently, Konstatin Bronzit's Lavatory Lovestory and We Can't Live Without Cosmos both picked up Oscar nominations in the Best Animated Short category. Anton Dyakov is hoping to join Bronzit as Oscar nominated animators with his short film Boxballet, a film about a developing relationship between a gruff boxer and a young ballet dancer despite the differences in the worlds where they occupy.

Flowing Home (Comme un Fleuve/Nhu môt dòng sông)

It is 1998, and Thao, a woman living in Montreal writes to her sister Sao Mai that she would be arriving in Vietnam with her daughter. Twenty years earlier, Thao had fled Vietnam with her uncle in the turbulent years after the fall of Saigon, while Sao Mai stayed behind As time went on the two sisters maintained communication through writing as they detailed the changes in their lives. This film from the French Canadian director Sandra Desmazieres shows the effects that war has on a family separated, a story that happened far too often. This film has been made available on YouTube by the National Film Board of Canada, which helped with the financing. 

Mum is Pouring Rain (Maman Pleut des Cordes)

Depression is a very common mental illness that afflicts millions of individuals. It is also what stimulates the story of Mum is Pouring Rain, an animated special that had aired on the French television channel Canal+. It tells the story of Jane, a little girl who is sent to live with her grandmother for Christmas while her mother gets treatment for depression. (I presume that it had gotten a qualifying theatrical release before its airing in France). It certainly has the colorful animation style that is seen in most animated specials. I also hope that it takes a serious look at the treatment of mental illness, since that is a fairly important modern problem as well.

The Musician (Le Musicien)

The Musician, also known as Navozande, The Musician tells the story of a musician in 13th century Persia who is summoned to the palace of the Mongolian monarch where an important individual from deep in his past. It is animated with paper cutouts, a style that dates back over 90 years to the release of The Adventures of Prince Achmed in 1926, although one that has become far less common nowadays. The director Reza Riahi was born in Iran before moving to France to work on his animation career. He served as a character designer and art director for the Oscar nominated feature film The Breadwinner by Cartoon Saloon. 

Namoo

Erick Oh made waves a year ago with Opera, his brilliant visual installment that received an Oscar nomination in the Best Animated Short category and one some people felt could have upset the eventual winner If Anything Happens I Love You. His follow up film Namoo may be more straightforward of a narrative, but it is still no less ambitious. Namoo is described as "a narrative poem come to life", and it follows the life of a man from birth to death as he grows up with a tree that contains memento of items from his life. It makes sense as Namoo is a Korean word meaning tree. Of course, not content to keeping it a traditional animated film, Namoo was created as a virtual reality experience using the animation tool provided by Oculus. I'm not sure how different that would make it from Google Spotlight Stories's Pearl, but it's worth watching to find out.

Only a Child

Back in June 1992, 12-year-old Severn Cullis-Suzuki travelled from her home in Vancouver, Canada to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to attend the Earth Summit. She was invited to talk, and she gave a scathing five-minute speech and came to be known as the "Girl Who Silenced the World." It's been almost 30 years since the speech, and unfortunately it feels as though little has changed. Animator Simone Giampaolo had taken the audio of Cullis-Suzuki's speech and collaborated with over 20 other animators to craft a visual poem that illustrates that the concerns that were brought up in the 1992 speech still exist today. It is a powerful message made even more so with the images;

Robin Robin

Robin is a young robin who was raised by a family of mice. She goes along with her family to sneak into the houses of "who-mans" to help scavenge for food. However, her inability to sneak around quietly proves to be problematic. She leaves in order to prove her sneaking ability only to run into a magpie with a broken wing. He tells her about a star that can grant wishes, but they must escape the clutches of cat hungry for her next meal. Robin Robin is an animated special available on Netflix from Aardman Animations, best known for their work on Oscar winning Wallace and Gromit shorts The Wrong Trousers and A Close Shave. However, unlike the claymation used in the older works, Robin Robin uses the needling felt style that was used in the Oscar nominated Sister. 

Souvenir Souvenir

Like Robin Robin, Souvenir Souvenir is a film whose title is made up of two repeating words. However, the two films couldn't be any more different. While Robin Robin is a cute and cuddly family film from Aardman Animation, Souvenir Souvenir is a dark and gritty about war from Bastien Dubois, previously nominated for an Oscar in 2010 for Madagascar: A Journey Diary. Dubois made the film in honor of his grandfather, who had fought in the Algerian War that lasted from 1954 to 1962. The film combines a semi-realistic style of modern days scenes with a cartoony style for war flashbacks. It definitely looks to be a film that isn't out to warm the heart.

Step Into the River (He An)

The People's Republic of China had a one-child policy in place from 1980 to 2015, limiting families to just one child. In a highly paternalistic society such as China, the one-child policy end up hurting females, as families often end up abandoning or even worse killing their newborn daughters. The policy was addressed previously in the aforementioned Sister, and this year Step Into the River does the same albeit differently. This French-Chinese co-production, whose Chinese title basically means The Edge of the River, tells the story of two girls in a fishing village as they grapple with the effects that this policy has had on their lives.

Us Again

Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon debuted in theaters in March of this year, where it was accompanied by a lovely little short titled Us Again. Us Again tells the story of an elderly interracial couple Dot and Art. Dot is still full of energy but Art prefers to stay at home. One day Art goes out during a rainstorm and finds himself transformed back into his youthful self. He dances around before running into young Dot. They dance around the city before Art finds out that he transforms back into his geriatric form once he gets out of the rain. Then it becomes a race to stay in the rain. This charming little short inspired by La La Land is now available to stream on Disney Plus.

The Windshield Wiper

Sitting a smoke-filled cafe in the middle of the day, a man with a Rollie Fingers mustache lights a cigarette and asks the question, "What is love?" This question is explored through several different vignettes in The Windshield Wiper, the latest film from animator Alberto Mielgo, best known for being the "visual consultant" that developed the style from Sony's Oscar-winning blockbuster Spider-Man Into the Spider-verse. The Windshield Wiper possesses a distinctive style reminiscent of the animated masterpiece and it would be interesting to see what the entire film would be like.

-------------------------------------------------

Well, these are the 15 films that have reached the shortlist. I would have liked to written more, but in searching around the internet I was only able to find six of the finalists (Affair of the Art, Flowing Home, Only a Child, Robin Robin, Step Into the River and Us Again), and I really don't want to fully review a film before the actual review of the nominated films. Anyways, there is definitely an international flair to this year's list. Cartoon Brew lists the home country for each of the finalists, and only three of them came from the United States. The others come from Canada, the UK, France, China, Russia, Switzerland and Chile. It's worth noting that of the major animation studios only Us Again made it onto the shortlist, as Pixar's Twenty Something and Nona both failed to advance. Besides the Pixar film, the Taiwan production Night Bus was another film touted as a potential contender that ended up missing out.

Anyways, I'm not going to venture a guess as to the final nomination list. I'm just hoping more of these films would pop up in their entirety over the next few days.