Oscars Hidden Gold 2024: Best Animated Short Film

Ah, it’s that wonderful time of year again, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gives their picks of the best of last year’s filmmaking. Before we get to this year’s competition, with children’s toys going through an existential crisis and literal bombs at the box-office, I always like starting with the films and/or categories that people don’t talk about as much. First, let’s look at the animated shorts, where anything is possible. Disney got a major snub this year as their shortlisted film Once Upon a Studio, a celebration of the company’s 100th anniversary, didn’t make the cut. While I felt that it didn’t have a lot of substance to be a contender, the animation was spectacular in its combination of a century’s worth of styles with live action. With Disney out of the race, all the shorts this year are independent and deal with mature themes, which I feel makes for a more interesting competition. Here are the nominees.

Clothes make the film—literally—in Our Uniform, a short from Iran that takes a look at the experiences of young women in Iranian schools, providing social commentary through the clothing they have to wear. (The film makes it clear at the beginning that it is not criticizing the hijab, but is simply telling it like it is.) While I don’t think there’s enough here to make it a contender, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited to see it the moment I saw a still frame. The film uses an utterly charming animation style in which stop motion of clothing is used as backdrops for 2D animation, and I loved how the two styles were mixed. It also is a great way to add to the commentary, tackling provocative themes in an endearing way.

Letter to a Pig is a joint production between France and Israel where I honestly can’t tell if it’s a contender or not. The film centers on a class hearing a lecture from a Holocaust survivor whose life was saved by a pig. The kids crack jokes as he reads a letter he wrote to the pig who saved his life, but it isn’t long before the mood changes. This short started out promising, but when a girl in the class sinks into a daydream while hearing his words, it started to lose me. I can see what the film was going for, but I think the themes got a bit muddled in the execution. My gut tells me that it’s certainly possible the Academy would go for this, but it’s not my pick. It’s a shame, because I loved the animation style here. It’s rotoscoped, but rather than used a realistic style for the results, the filmmaker used a combination of sketchy linework, painting, and live action to create something I thought looked utterly unique.

French short Pachyderme uses charming, almost storybook-like visuals to come to terms with a disturbing truth. A woman is describing her experiences staying at her grandparents’ house for the summer as a young girl. Childhood fantasies are mixed with the increasing realization that there’s something much darker going on. While the main topic might be clear to many viewers, it’s never explicitly mentioned onscreen, which maintains the point of view of the protagonists’ memories, and given the practically stereotypical trend of how of how a lot of Oscar shorts go for the jugular with their themes, I think it definitely paid off in the overall execution. This was one of the better animated shorts this year, and it makes great use of the medium as well.

Ninety-Five Senses is by far my pick for the category. It also marks the first foray into animation (or at least directing it) for Napoleon Dynamite filmmaker Jared Hess, who co-directed it with his wife Jerusha, and they pulled out all the stops. (Jared’s animated feature debut, Thelma the Unicorn, releases later this year.) Told in multiple animation styles, it focuses on an older man (voiced by a superb Tim Blake Nelson) who delivers a monologue on his thoughts on each of his five senses, delivered mainly through the lens of his memories and his views of life and society. I’m actually going to stop there because the progression towards the main reveal of this short is done so well that, while I know a lot of these shorts can sometimes be hard to find, if you do end up seeing this one, I want you to experience it for yourself. It’s engaging, incredibly animated, both funny and devastating, and easily the best short of the bunch. I just hope the Academy feels the same way.

Finally, while it’s one of the weaker shorts in my opinion, WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko was the most intriguing from an animation perspective. Directed by prior nominee Dave Mullins (Pixar’s Lou), and using John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s song “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” as a starting point (it was produced by their son Sean Ono Lennon), the film takes place on a battlefield in an alternate version of WWI, where two soldiers on opposite sides play chess using carrier pigeons to deliver each others’ moves. It isn’t long, though, before the reality of war rears its head. It’s cute and sad and anti-war, but aside from that, I can’t call this a contender overall. However, with what’s currently happening in Ukraine and Gaza, don’t be surprised if it ends up being one anyway. That said, what really struck me about this short was the animation, or at least, who it was credited to. The short was made by artists at Wētā FX (Peter Jackson’s VFX company) using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine (Epic provided a grant for the project as well). I think the use of video game technology for animation is something that I hope gets explored more. As for the animation itself, it’s a cel-shaded look combining 3D graphics (the Pixar influence is particularly felt here) with painting-style textures and 2D line work.

Overall, I liked this batch of shorts a lot. All the nominees this year used the medium of animation to tackle heavy themes in an interesting way, and even the weaker ones were stylistically experimental enough that I remained interested. While Ninety-Five Senses is my pick, the lack of a major player, current politics, and the Academy’s tendency to skew towards certain themes make it hard for me to accurately predict who will win. I guess we’ll have to wait until March 10th to find out. Stay posted for more of my coverage of this year’s Oscar hidden gems.