Seven Animated Features Academy Voters Shouldn’t Overlook This Awards Season

The ongoing animated feature Oscars race feels as wide open as ever and although a few favorites are emerging, one or two nomination slots are still up for grabs.

A record 33 films have been submitted to the animated feature Oscar race this year. More than just quantity, though, the quality demonstrated by many of those films is exceptional, and Academy voters have a huge task ahead of them in trying to pick the five best from among the lot.

Below, we’ve picked seven titles we hope voters look closely at before casting their ballots.

Robot Dreams

Director: Pablo Berger

Country: Spain

Europe’s best animated feature of the year, according to the European Film Awards at least, was Spanish director Pablo Berger’s animation debut, Robot Dreams. Adapted from Sara Varon’s graphic novel of the same name, Robot Dreams reflects on themes of friendship, loss, and how memory and imagination help us to cope. Like the graphic novel, the film has no dialogue and needs none to tell one of the most human stories of the year despite featuring a cast of all animals and robots. The film’s incredible execution is doubly impressive, considering the charming and expressive 2d animation was handled by a pop-up studio that Berger set up in downtown Madrid when the pandemic scrapped his original agreement to work with Cartoon Saloon.

Deep Sea

Director: Xiaopeng Tian

Country: China

One of the year’s most visually striking animated features is also among the highest-grossing. Deep Sea currently boasts the 10th-highest global box office of the year among animated features, although most of the world hasn’t had a chance to see it yet. The film follows Shenxiu, a young girl abandoned by her mother who suffers from bad dreams about a creature called “Nightmare.” On a cruise with her extended family, Shenxiu is lured to the deck during a storm and swept overboard before being taken into the fantastic world of the Deep Sea restaurant inside an old transformed submarine. The film’s color, lighting, music, sound, and animation are all breathtaking. If this movie had been produced and distributed in the U.S., few titles would have been discussed more. It features some of the most exciting and original use of cg we’ve seen in feature animation in years.

The First Slam Dunk

Director: Takehiko Inoue

Country: Japan

Takehiko Inoue’s The First Slam Dunk was one of the year’s biggest commercial hits in Japan, and it’s easy to see why. The film features flashy basketball action sequences counter-balanced by touching flashbacks where the animation slows down to better tell the heartbreaking and uplifting stories of a team of high school basketball players. The Academy rarely recognizes one anime title in any given year, and this year, there are two strong contenders in Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron and Makoto Shinkai’s Suzume. Still, The First Slam Dunk deserves to be in the conversation with those films.

My Love Affair with Marriage

Director: Signe Baumane

Country: Latvia, U.S., Luxembourg

My Love Affair with Marriage is the first-person account of how songs and fairytales convinced young Zelma that love would one day solve all her problems. As she grows up, though, Zelma realizes the world in which she lives is far different than the one she was promised. A coming-of-age story that follows its protagonist through much of her life, the film also features interspersed biological segments that scientifically explain much of what Zelma is experiencing. Lessons about brain chemistry, anthropology, and the construct of romantic love provide viewers with a masterclass in human behavior. Few, if any, of this year’s qualified features feel as personal as Baumane’s My Love Affair with Marriage.

Perlimps

Director: Alê Abreu

Country: Brazil

Perlimps is the latest feature from Oscar-nominated The Boy and the World director Alê Abreu. Set in a vibrantly colored rainforest, the Brazilian film follows secret agents Claé and Bruô, an anthropomorphic wolf and bear representing the Kingdoms of the Sun and Moon, respectively. With top-class sound engineering and an often-surprising soundtrack accompanying the film’s breathtaking visuals and innovative use of light, Perlimps is a feast for the senses.

Titina

Director: Kajsa Næss

Country: Norway, Belgium

Titina, a Norway-Belgium co-production, is based on real events and tells the story of a 1920s expedition by airship to the North Pole. Onboard the vessel are Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, Italian aviator Umberto Nobile, and the latter’s pet dog Titina, whose mute but expressive presence anchors the whole film. Titina is the feature directorial debut of Kajsa Næss, whose shorts include Deconstruction Workers and It’s Up to You. While families can certainly enjoy the film together, it’s not specifically a kids’ film, and there is as much or more for adults, especially adult fans of history, to take away from the story.

Leo

Directors: Robert Smigel, David Wachtenheim, Robert Marianetti

Country: U.S.

While the rest of the films on this list are independent or small-budget foreign productions, Leo had the power of Netflix backing it and featured many of the same team that helped create the Hotel Transylvania franchise. The film also starred and was produced by Adam Sandler, which surely elevated its profile and helped it score the biggest debut ever for a Netflix Original animated film. Leo features impressive cg animation by Australia’s Animal Logic (owned by Netflix) and fun songs that help make the film a joy to watch from start to finish. For our money, it deserves to be talked about alongside the other big commercial cg releases of the year, such as Mario, Elemental, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem.