Best Animated Short - 2025: Winner

 Well, it's that night, the night of the Academy Awards!

To be honest, even though 2025 had been a fantastic year for movies, I hadn't really taken part in much of it. Sure, I watched all of the Best Animated Short nominees, but of the other major categories the only film I saw was Best Picture co-favorite One Battle After Another. I didn't even watch Sinners yet. I also haven't even seen the Best Animated Feature favorite Kpop Demon Hunters. It certainly is a dramatic change over 2012 when I saw eight of the ten Best Picture nominees before the ceremony. 

Oh well, it's not like it matters because of my work schedule I won't be able to actually watch the ceremony. But you know I'll be watching updates to find out what is going to win the one category that truly matters to me. And this year it is...

The Girl Who Cried Pearls

That's right, after a 19 year drought that started after The Danish Poet won back in 2006, the National Film Board of Canada finally finds themselves back in the winner's circle with Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski's lavish stop-motion fable. If you read my review then you should know that my personal preference was Papillon, but The Girl Who Cried Pearls always stood as a potential upset. Meanwhile the NFB finally gets their seventh win in this category, which is all the more remarkable when you consider how often they were nominated since their last win.

2007: Madame Tutli Putli
2011: Dimanche, Wild Life
2014: Me and My Moulton
2016: Blind Vaysha
2018: Animal Behaviour
2021: Affairs of the Art
2022: The Flying Sailor

Eight nominations in between win, including two in one year in 2011. Not to mention all those other films that made the shortlist but didn't quite make it to the final nominations list. Oh well, the drought is finally over and now Canada can celebrate.

As for the rest of the ceremony, it was pretty much down to One Battle After Another against Sinners. Sinners has the benefit from setting a new record for nominations by a movie, and also captured the SAG Actor award for Best Ensemble. On the other hand, On Battle After Another had won most of the other guild awards, most notably PGA and DGA. It had been the front-runner for most of the season, but Sinners did appear to be creeping back into upset territory.

The first award of the night was a chance One Battle After Another and Sinners to go head to head with both nominated for Best Supporting Actress. And it ended up not mattering as the award went instead to Amy Madigan for her deliciously evil turn in Weapons. The win was a bit of a surprise even if Madigan had won SAG, as she was the only nominated performance who was not in a Best Picture nominee, and her nomination was the only one for Weapons. Still, it marked a win in her first nomination since 1985 when she was nominated for Twice in a Lifetime, a performance that was not well received in the 1985 Supporting Actress Smackdown at The Film Experience. I guess she made up for it there. Madigan also established herself as the second oldest actress to win in this category, behind only Peggy Ashcraft in A Passage to India (1984) and a full three years older than Ruth Gordon who had won for another horror film in Rosemary's Baby (1968).

The ceremony proceeded with the animation awards, with KPop Demon Hunters surprising very few with its win in Best Animated Feature (despite some people swearing by Zootopia 2) and The Girl Who Cried Pearls being a little bit of a bigger surprise in Best Animated Short, when it felt that people were either going with the artistry of Papillon or the relatable nature of Retirement Plan. Two technical categories where only Sinners was nominated followed in Best Costume Design and Best Makeup & Hair. It won neither as both went to Guillermo del Toro's divisive adaptation of Frankenstein. 

The brand new Best Casting category was next. It was a category that people had been clamoring to add for ages. Most people thought it would go to Sinners, which had won the SAG Actor for Best Ensemble, which while it wasn't the same thing it was close enough. However, to the surprise of all it went to One Battle After Another instead. It was a shocking upset that suggested One Battle After Another may have Best Picture in the bag. Before people had a chance to process this surprising upset, there was another surprise, this time in the Best Live Action Short category. Two People Exchanging Saliva appeared to be the front-runner going in, and it was a winner, but it wasn't the only one as it ended up tying with The Singers. This was the first tie since the now-defunct Best Sound Effects Editing award went to both Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty in 2012. This was now the first tie in the Best Live Action Short category since 1994, when Franz Kafka's It's a Wonderful Life and Trevor both claimed a victory.

There ceremony continued with another chance for One Battle After Another and Sinners to go head to head, this time in the Best Supporting Actor category. Most people thought Sean Penn had it in the bag after winning SAG, but Delroy Lindo wasn't nominated anywhere else so it never had a chance to go head to head against Penn. It didn't matter anyways as Sean Penn took home the award to become a three-time Oscar winner, after winning Best Actor in 2003 for Mystic River and 2008 for Milk. The screenplay categories followed, and this didn't add any clarity as both front-runners were nominated in the two distinct categories and both won them handily, with Sinners getting its first win for Best Original Screenplay while One Battle After Another winning for Best Adapted Screenplay. It was a heartwarming moment for Paul Thomas Anderson as he finally had an Oscar after going 0 for 11 for films from Boogie Nights to Magnolia to There Will Be Blood to Inherent Vice to Phantom Thread to Licorice Pizza.

After a break for the In Memoriam portion, it was time for some more technical awards. One Battle After Another and Sinners both received nominations in Best Production Design, but once again the award went to a different film, this time Frankenstein winning its third trophy. Only Sinners was nominated for Best Visual Effects, but it had no chance of winning against the likes of Avatar: Fire and Ash. Then after the documentary awards which went to All the Empty Rooms for Best Documentary Short and Mr. Nobody Against Putin for Best Documentary Feature, we come to the rest of the technical awards, all of which featured both One Battle After Another and Sinners.

Best Original Score was the first of these. One Battle After Another won much praise for its minimalist score, it went instead to Sinners's Ludwig Goransson. Best Sound was next, but that one went to a third party film, this time it was for F1: the Movie instead of a fourth win for Frankenstein. The increasingly important Best Editing award was next, and when One Battle After Another won, it pretty much had Best Picture all locked up. Some Sinners supporters still had hope for their film especially after it came back to win Best Cinematography, a historic win for Autumn Durald Arkapaw, the first female director of photography to win in this category.

As the ceremony neared the end, KPop Demon Hunters becomes the first animated film since Soul in 2020 to win multiple Oscars as it took home Best Original Song for its hit song "Golden" to go along with its win in Best Animated Feature. Then Best Director continued its migration to earlier in the ceremony as it was award fifth from the end. It went to Anderson for One Battle After Another which further locked down its inevitable Best Picture victory. Best International Feature was next. It was a category that had two Best Picture nominees in Norway's Sentimental Value and Brazil's The Secret Agent, along with another film that many thought should have been in Best Picture in Iran's It was Just an Accident. Sentimental Value did have the most nominations of the trio with nine, even if four of them were in acting categories. It had been shut out to that point, but that wasn't the case as it won the Oscar.

All that was left were the leading categories and Best Picture. Best Actor was first. It was a category that was fairly up in the air, with Timothee Chalamet being an early darling for his role in Marty Supreme before Michael B. Jordan took the momentum with his dual role in Sinners after he won the SAG. Wagner Moura was campaigning hard for The Secret Agent, and Leonardo DiCaprio was the star of the film that had catapulted to the favorite for Best Picture in One Battle After Another. In the end the SAG victory held up the most as Jordan took the prize. There was no such suspense for Best Actress. While Rose Byrne had some critics wins for If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, Jessie Buckley turned into the overwhelming front-runner for her devastating turn in Hamnet, and she took home the Oscar as well. By the end there was little suspense for Best Picture as well as One Battle After Another took home the grand prize.

All and all it was a fitting conclusion for a memorable film year. Sure, Sinners supporters were disappointed that it failed to take home Best Picture, but it still had a solid showing. It was better off than Marty Supreme, Train Dreams, Bugonia, and The Secret Agent which got into Best Picture but went home empty handed.

The winners

Best Animated Short: The Girl Who Cried Pearls
Best Animated Feature: KPop Demon Hunters
Best Picture: One Battle After Another
Best Director: Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another
Best Actor: Michael B. Jordan, Sinners
Best Actress: Jessie Buckley, Hamnet
Best Supporting Actor: Sean Penn, One Battle After Another
Best Supporting Actress: Amy Madigan, Weapons
Best Adapted Screenplay: One Battle After Another
Best Original Screenplay: Sinners
Best Editing: One Battle After Another
Best Cinematography: Sinners
Best Costume Design: Frankenstein
Best Original Score: Sinners
Best Original Song: "Golden," KPop Demon Hunters
Best Production Design: Frankenstein
Best Sound: F1: the Movie
Best Visual Effects: Avatar: Fire and Ash
Best Makeup & Hair: Frankenstein
Best Casting: One Battle After Another
Best International Feature: Sentimental Value, Norway
Best Documentary Feature: Mr. Nobody Against Putin
Best Documentary Short: All the Empty Rooms
Best Live Action Short: The Singers & Two People Exchanging Saliva

Wins by movie
One Battle After Another: 6
Sinners: 4
Frankenstein: 3
KPop Demon Hunters: 2
All the Empty Rooms: 1
Avatar: Fire and Ash: 1
F1: the Movie: 1
The Girl Who Cried Pearls: 1
Hamnet: 1
Mr. Nobody Against Putin: 1
Sentimental Value: 1
The Singers: 1
Two People Exchanging Saliva: 1
Weapons: 1