Best Animated Short - 2023: The Shortlist

It's that time of year again, when I dust off this blog and force myself to write about the films that can potential win the Oscar for Best Animated Short. Of course I haven't really paid attention to the race beforehand, not like Cartoon Brew who have kept track of animated shorts that qualified by winning festivals, then interviewing their directors. Of course, yesterday marked the day when I can no longer ignore the race, since it was the day that the Academy released the shortlist for several categories, including Best Animated Short. 

Ideally I'd write about the shortlisted films the day the shortlist was released, but I was driving to Pittsburgh on no sleep and went to watch a Pittsburgh Penguins game, so I really didn't have a chance to watch the trailers for each of the shortlist or learned a little more about these films. But now that I'm back home there's no excuse for me to delay. Of course I'm not going to be reviewing the films, since that's not the point (and also because I've seen barely any of them). Which makes me wonder why anybody would read this post.

27

27 is a film from the Hungarian animator Flóra Anna Buda. It is apparently about a young woman celebrating her 27th birthday who hasn't really experienced life from her rather provincial social situation. She goes to a party and ends up getting into a bike accident that sends her into a coma which will end up completely changing her life. Only the trailer is available right now, but from what I can see it does have a psychedelic style that is highly reminiscent of the Oscar nominated Genius Loci. The film also deals with some fairly explicit sexual themes, although that is probably evident from how the trailer shows a naked female and a man asking a question about whether or not the other individual has had sexual intercourse. Then again in recent years the Academy has nominated several films with mature sexual themes (and in some cases even given them the win), so the content wouldn't prevent this from being a contender, which it certainly is with its win of the Best Short prize at Cannes, although none of the winners have even gotten a nomination since When the Day Breaks all the way back in 1999. Anyways have the trailer.

Boom

Boom is one of the two films uploaded in its entirety on YouTube. It is a student film made in the French animation school École des Nouvelles Images. It qualified for the Oscar by winning a Gold citation at the Student Academy Awards, one of the ways for a film to qualify. And a Student Academy Award winner has been nominated in this category even more recently than the Cannes Best Short winner, since An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It qualified through this avenue last year and earned a nomination. I'm not entirely sure Boom is going to get the same honor since it doesn't have the meta quality of Ostrich, especially since it is done on CGI instead of the time-consuming stop-motion, but it's still good fun. You can watch it below.

Eeva

Grief is a very complicated topic, and several films have addressed it, including Eeva, this Estonian animated film from an Estonian and Croatian animation team. It tells the story of a woman who had just lost her husband and struggles to act like how she feels people expect to her ask, but it's become much more difficult the more she drinks. I've only seen the trailer, so I can't really say how well it addresses the theme of grief, but it certainly makes for some interesting imagery, especially since the trailer shows some of the other mourners crying hysterically while the main character stands there stone-faced. Of course people grieve in different ways so who's to say Eeva is grieving in the right or wrong way?

Humo (Smoke)

Mexico has had an animation history that dates back over 100 years, but according to Cartoon Brew one thing that had eluded Mexican animators is a nomination in the Best Animated Short category. This is only the shortlist so there's no guarantee that this sad fact will change, but at least Humo makes it possible. Of course it was directed by Rita Basulto, who certainly ranks as one of the most decorated Mexican animators, having won four Ariel Awards, the Mexican equivalent of the Oscars. And it's about a topic that is almost like catnip to the Academy: the Holocaust. It was an adaptation of a picture book that tells the story of a child living in a concentration camp. And it is animated with stark stop-motion, a medium that the Academy has rewarded several times in recent years. Which means this has a strong chance of ending the Mexican drought, but you never know.

I'm Hip!

John Musker was a longtime Disney director who teamed up with Ron Clements to helm several animated features, beginning with The Great Mouse Detective but also included some of the most beloved classics such as The Little Mermaid and Aladdin. The duo went on to direct three features that were nominated in the Best Animated Feature category in Treasure Planet, The Princess and the Frog, and Moana. Two years after Moana came out, Musker announced his retirement from Disney. However, like fellow Disney alum Glen Keane he didn't sit around placidly in retirement. Instead he decided to go into the field where he got his start to his career but had sat on the backburner for most of his Disney years: animating. For his film he took David Frishberg's comic jazz piece "I'm Hip" and animated it to be sung by a cat who is decidedly un-hip. Keane won an Oscar for his independent work with Dear Basketball. It remains to be seen if Musker will have the same fortune. There doesn't appear to be any video from the film online, but here's the song that's apparently used in the film.

A Kind of Testament

Privacy has become an important talking point in today's society, especially now that social media has become so prevalent where everything you put online can potentially be seen by others. At least that seems to be the theme explored by visual artist Stephen Vuilleman in his film A Kind of Testament. In this film a young woman tells her story of how she found out that somebody had taken her personal pictures and used them to make animated short films, some of which can be rather gruesome. The film reportedly uses a style where the woman tells her story while the viewer watches the films that were created using her images. I'm not exactly sure how well it works, but well enough to get on the shortlist. The story was reportedly fictional, but the disturbing thing is that it could very well be true.

Koerkorter (Dog Apartment)

Estonia is a small European country along the Baltic Sea but it has a thriving animation scene. It was just last year that Sierra, an animated film produced in Estonia made it onto the shortlist for the Best Animated Short Oscar (but sadly I didn't even write a post about the shortlisted films last year), although it ultimately didn't pick up a nomination. This year there are two films from Estonia that made it onto the shortlist: Eeva which we had seen earlier and now Koerkorter. This is a stop motion animated film about a ballet dancer that was sent to a farm collective, or a kolkhoz. And he lives in an apartment that's also a dog. At least that's what I gather. The trailer doesn't tell us much but maybe it is as weird as it sounds.

Letter to a Pig

Memory is a fickle thing, but what can one expect about something that is constructed by the firing of brain cells powered by electricity and chemicals. At least that seems to be the theme explored in the short film Letter to a Pig. It was apparently inspired by an event that happened to director Tal Kantor who as a schoolgirl heard a Holocaust survivor's letter to a pig that helped him live and later had a vivid dream of the event. It seems to explore memory in multiple ways, from the survivor and his memory of a traumatic event from decades past to a girl's memory of hearing about this memory. At least that's the impression that I get reading about this film. It also apparently uses a mixed media production style which isn't necessarily represented in the film's trailer, but the trailer makes it seem dramatic enough.

Ninety-Five Senses

Jared and Jerusha Hess are a husband-and-wife filmmaking duo whose debut feature Napoleon Dynamite became an instant hit (and it remains the most popular film that I screened in my three years as a projectionist in college). After a few more feature length films and a few television episodes, they return to their roots in short films with Ninety-Five Senses. Although they are credited as directors, the real work was done by six animators that had entered and won a contest held by the Salt Lake Film Society. It is apparently about a death row inmate, played by actor Tim Blake Nelson, who looks back at his life through each of his five senses, with five animators each animating a particular sense and a sixth animating the man himself. The animators were evidently given a great degree of freedom and can be interesting, not that it really comes through in the trailer.

Once Upon a Studio

This is another film that is available in its entirety online. Walt Disney Animation Studios has had a long and illustrious history dating back to 1923, during which they produced several films that won in this particular category as well as several feature films. Once Upon a Studio was a film created to celebrate the studio's 100th anniversary. The film's story is pretty much just Disney characters coming together to take a group photo. It's not exactly the deepest of storylines, but it is a touching tribute to the studio that changed animation. It includes references to every single animated film they had made, even some of the little-seen ones like Strange World, The Black Cauldron, and the musical anthology films. Sadly the representation from shorts is rather lacking. It also features the last on-screen appearance of Burny Mattinson, director of Mickey's Christmas Carol (another film full of Disney cameos) who passed away before the release of the film. And for a Christmas present Disney put it on YouTube for the entire world to see, forcing me to have to edit this post and include the full short.

Our Uniform

Clothing is an important part of our everyday lives, and nowhere is that more evident than in a uniform, an article of clothing that is mandatory. That is certainly the case in Iran, a country that had been through an authoritarian history that had very strict laws regarding clothing, especially for women. Our Uniform seems an attempt to make sense of this period of time by telling the story of an Iranian woman that looks back at her schoolgirl days and some of the oppression that occurred in the regulation of her uniform. The trailer is very short but it gives a good example of the film's visual style which is made to look like the animated elements are interacting directly with articles of clothing.

Pachyderme

Childhood can be a very confusing time. There are a lot in the world that you don't understand and everything seems quite scary. This is especially true for kids that do have something to fear. At least that's the theme addressed in Pachyderme, a film by French animator Stéphanie Clément. It tells the story of a nine-year-old girl who goes to visit her grandparents' house. On the surface it seems like a rather standard trip, the grandfather takes the girl to the lake, and then takes her into the woods to listen to the sounds of nature. It all seems so innocent, but a sense of dread permeates the entire film, and pretty soon it becomes clear why. At least I thought it did. You can see if you can sense it for yourself, after all this is the other film that is readily available on YouTube, thanks to Short of the Week.

Pete

Gender identity has become quite a hot-button topic in today's society, although one that hasn't gotten much representation in animated films. Longtime Pixar animator Bret Parker aims to change that. Pete tells the story of her wife (yes it's an LGBTQ film directed by a female in a lesbian marriage, get over it.) who maintains her female gender identity but keeps it hidden by going around as Pete. She loves playing baseball and signs up for Little League Baseball. It just happened to be a year after Little League allows girls to play, but not everybody is quite prepared to see Pete on the field. Pete doesn't really get into the complicated mess that is the transgender debate, but it still addresses the gender identity topic with maturity. It is streaming on the Criterion Channel, but if you don't have that, here's its trailer.

War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

John Lennon remains a very important figure in the world of music even over 40 years after his unfortunate assassination, first as a member of the Beatles then later in a career with his wife Yoko Ono. He was already featured in a film nominated for Best Animated Short in I Met the Walrus. Their son Sean Ono Lennon is trying to get a second one into the nomination circle with War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko. It apparently started with Ono Lennon trying to get a music video made of their 1971 song "Happy Xmas (War is Over) and ended up with him teaming up with Oscar winning director Peter Jackson and Oscar nominated animator (for 2017's Lou) Dave Mullins. The film ends up being about 11 minutes along so it's more than just the one song, and apparently the tells of soldiers in World War I playing chess. I don't know what else is in the video since there's no trailer of it, but have the original song that inspired the film.

Wild Summon

The salmon is a fish with a very interesting life cycle. They are born and spend their early days in freshwater bodies of water such as streams and river, then as they grow older they migrate to the sea where they spend most of their adult lives. Then at a certain point in their lives they swim back to the freshwater streams and rivers of their birth where they mate and give birth to the next generation of salmon who would complete the cycle again. The British animation duo of Karni and Saul takes this life cycle and animates it, only instead of fish you have humans in snorkeling outfit. Yes, it sounds weird and probably looks even more weird if you watch the trailer. Yet it might be interesting, maybe.

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Well there you have it, all 15 films that have gotten shortlisted. I haven't really paid enough attention to be able to rattle off all of the deserving films that were left off, but one that I have noticed that seemed to get a lot of buzz that isn't on the list is Electra, the pixilation/stop motion film from Daria Kashcheeva, who was previously nominated for Daughter. Anyways, as always I would have much preferred to write more of these films, but unlike last year when I took a year off in writing about the shortlisted films, at least this time I got a post out, as unsatisfied as I am with what I wrote. I'm not going to venture a guess as to who would get nominated. It was hard enough when there were only 10 films on the shortlist, but with 15 it's even harder, especially with the vast majority not readily available. We'll all find out together once the nominations are announced on January 23.