Best Animated Short - 2025: The Shortlist

I'm going to be completely honest, for the past several years every time the Oscars wrap up and I write the post looking back at the winner, I don't think about the upcoming Best Animated Short category until the shortlist drops. It's not like in the early days of this blog when I made a post about all of the qualifying films. So even when outlets like Cartoon Brew are profiling as many of the films that have earned qualification status, I don't really pay attention and rigorously look up the films, at least not until the shortlist drops and I'll only have 15 films to write about, instead of the 113 that Cartoon Brew reported had qualified.

And of course for the past several years the shortlist just happened to drop right before I have to make the drive from Texas to Virginia where I would be spending the holidays with my family. And I don't have time to make this post until after I arrive, which is usually a day or two after the shortlist is announced. And so by the time I make this post, there are other outlets that preview the shortlisted films much better than I ever could, such as Animation Magazine. But this is the Best Animated Short blog darn it so I'm going to write about these films anyways.

Anyways, because I don't go to film festivals to watch animated short, nor do I work in the animation industry so I don't feel that I would qualify for the Animation Showcase that has most of these films on streaming. This means the only way I have to watch these films in full is if I can find them online, or if I can go to one of the screenings of nominees when they happen. Right now there appears to be four that are on YouTube, and one more that is available Vimeo on Demand. I don't feel like paying for the Vimeo on Demand film yet, so that means there are four I've seen. In the following profiles I'll keep from writing my full thoughts on the four I've seen, saving them for a full review if they are nominated.

Anyways, this intro has gone on for long enough, so here we go, the 15 shortlisted films:

Best Animated Short - 2024: The Winner!

Well, last night was the Academy Awards ceremony honoring the films from the 2024 film year (even though every other resource will call it the 2025 Oscars because of when the ceremony happened). Unfortunately I was unable to watch any second of it, as I was making a long distance drive from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Glendale, Arizona where I'll be staying in watching baseball spring training. But believe me I was keeping abreast of the winners whenever I can. And for the most part, it seems that most of the winners were what pundits were expecting. The categories that were the biggest surprise, it seems, were the animation categories.

Early on in the season it seemed that Flow was an early favorite for Best Animated Feature, winning a few critics prizes. But then The Wild Robot came steamrolling onto the scene, winning award after award and sweeping the Annies. It got to the point where most people thought that The Wild Robot was a lock, since it was after all a brilliant film despite being a big budget studio film. And yet when the dust settled on Oscars night, the winner turned out to be: Flow! 

And then there was Best Animated Short...

Best Animated Short - 2024

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since the Oscar nominations were announced, and while most people have been trying to work up the courage to sit through Emilia Perez to complete their viewing of Best Picture nominees, I've been on the hunt for the Best Animated Short nominees, just as I have been every year since I started focusing on this category all the way back in 2007. Besides the two that I found before the Oscar nominations were even announced I managed to come across Beautiful Men and Beurk! through Vimeo on Demand. Unfortunately I had not had the same success with Magic Candies which means I had to go to a showing to complete the set. 

But now that it's happened, I'm ready to work on my review. Which to be honest is something I'm a bit hesitant to do. These reviews have become quite time-consuming and labor-intense. It's not like my reviews from over a dozen years ago looking back at old studio films or shorter independent shorts. With these reviews I often try to get into the filmmaker's mindset before offering my own interpretation, and that often means a lot of research into interviews done with the creators. And with the films becoming much more intricate (a phenomenon referenced in an editorial on Cartoon Brew), it becomes a lot harder to get all of my thoughts organized. And with operating on a time crunch it means by the end I often feel that what I'm writing is incoherent, as I did with last year's review. 

But alas, I have seen and reviewed every single nominated film in this category dating back to 1932 (with the obvious exception of Rippling Romance). And so I must soldier on and provide my thoughts on the five newest addition to the Oscar nominated animated short lineup, a number that now totals 398!

Best Animated Short - 2024: The Nominees

Well it's been over a month since I drove back to my parents' in Virginia, and over a month since the shortlist for the upcoming Oscars were revealed. It's been so long that I've gone and completed the AMPS trio in my other blog. The Oscar nominees were supposed to have already been announced but were delayed due to the terrible California wildfires. But the day has finally arrived where we find out what the new addition to the Best Animated Short lineup will be. And as you might have already been able to tell from the header, the films are:

Beautiful Men
Beurk! (Yuck!)
In the Shadow of the Cypress
Magic Candies
Wander to Wonder