15 Animated Shorts Make Oscar Shortlist, ‘Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio’ Picked For Best Sound, Score, Song

The Academy has unveiled the 15 animated short films that have been shortlisted for the 95th Oscars, to be held on March 12, 2023.

This year’s diverse list includes films with main producers from 10 different countries. Six feature female directors and two are debut films. Eighty-one films qualified in the category, and members of the short films and feature animation branches voted to determine the shortlist and will select the eventual nominees.

95th Academy Award Animated Short Shortlist

• Black Slide (Uri Lotan, Israel, U.K.)
• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Peter Baynton, U.S.)
• The Debutante (Elizabeth Hobbs, U.K.)
• The Flying Sailor (Amanda Forbis, Wendy Tilby, Canada)
• The Garbage Man (Laura Gonçalves, Portugal)
• Ice Merchants (João Gonzalez, Portugal, France, United Kingdom)
• It’s Nice in Here (Robert-Jonathan Koeyers, Netherlands)
• More than I Want to Remember (Amy Bench, U.S.)
• My Year of Dicks (Sara Gunnarsdóttir, U.S.)
• New Moon (Jérémie Balais, Jeff Le Bars, Raúl Domingo, France)
• An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It (Lachlan Pendragon, Australia)
• Passenger (Juan Pablo Zaramella, Argentina)
• Save Ralph (Spencer Susser, U.S.)
• Sierra (Sander Joon, Estonia)
• Steakhouse (Špela Čadež, Slovenia, Germany, France)

Last year, the Academy expanded the shortlist from 10 to 15 films, which proved a major benefit to independent and international works that were slowly being nudged out of the competition by big studios that had deep pockets to campaign with.

This year, those responsible for picking the shorts didn’t need any extra impetus to pick unique, independent, international, student, or challenging films. It’s an impressive shortlist, and it looks more like something you’d see at a festival than what we’ve come to expect from the Academy.

A few high-profile names appear on this year’s shortlist including two-time Oscar nominees Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby (who has a third on her own), BAFTA nominee Elizabeth Hobbs, multi-award-winning Argentine Juan Pablo Zaramella, and Slovenian standout Špela Čadež. Mostly missing this year are the big-budget, commercial short films from major studios that have found a lot of love in the category in recent years.

There is some exciting new talent on this year’s shortlist, too. João Gonzalez’s Ice Merchants is only his second film, while Robert-Jonathan Koeyers’ It’s Nice in Here and Lachlan Pendragon’s An Ostrich Told Me… are debuts; the latter has already won a Student Academy Award.

From the feature film shortlists announced on Wednesday, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was picked for sound, original score, and original song (“Ciao Papa”).

And ten films made the vfx shortlist this year in what looks like it would be an incredibly tight race if James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water didn’t feel like such a strong favorite.

Visual Effects

• All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)
• Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios)
• The Batman (Warner Bros.)
• Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Marvel Studios)
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel Studios)
• Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros.)
• Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal Pictures)
• Nope (Universal Pictures)
• Thirteen Lives (Amazon Studios/MGM)
• Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)