Oscar-Contending Features ‘Memoir Of A Snail’ And ‘Chicken For Linda’ Now Streaming For Free On The Animation Showcase

The Animation Showcase (TAS), a free streaming platform for animation professionals, is now showing two of the thirty-one qualified features in this year’s Oscars race.

Adam Elliot’s R-rated stop-motion feature Memoir of a Snail will be available on the platform through the holiday season. The film, which recently won best film at the BFI London Film Festival, was released theatrically in the U.S. by IFC Films last month.

The Australian indie animated feature tells the story of Grace Pudel, a lonely misfit with an affinity for collecting ornamental snails, who is separated from her twin brother Gilbert at a young age, which causes her to fall into a spiral of anxiety and angst. Her life changes after she meets an elderly eccentric woman named Pinky, who is full of grit and lust for life.

Also available is the French animated feature Chicken for Linda!, which won France’s César Award for best animated feature earlier this year. The film is directed by Chiara Malta and Sébastien Laudenbach, a husband-and-wife team who have worked together on numerous live-action and animated films in the past. Malta is best known for her 2019 live-action feature Simple Women (co-written with Laudenbach), while Laudenbach is a celebrated animation filmmaker who won an Annecy Jury Prize with his feature debut, The Girl Without Hands, in 2016.

The film’s synopsis:

Paulette feels guilty after unjustly punishing her daughter Linda and would do anything to make it up to her. Linda immediately asks for a meal of chicken with peppers, which reminds her of the dish her father used to make. But with a general strike closing stores all across town and pushing people into the streets, this innocent request quickly leads to an outrageous series of events that spirals out of control, as Paulette does everything she can to keep her promise and find a chicken for Linda.

In addition to these two features, The Animation Showcase is currently screening over a dozen Oscar-contending shorts, including Percebes, Self, La Perra, A Crab in the Pool, Yuck!, and Beautiful Men.

Animation professionals can sign up for The Animation Showcase, for free, by following this link. The Animation Showcase streaming platform is accessible via the Internet on any browser, as well as apps like Apple TV, Roku and Amazon’s Fire Stick.