BREAKING: Academy Announces 10 Animated Shorts Advance to Oscar Shortlist

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced this morning the 10 animated short films that have been shortlisted for the 2015 Oscar. The films were selected from 60 qualified shorts.

Here is the list:

• Bear Story (Historia De Un Oso)
  Gabriel Osorio, director, and Pato Escala, producer
  (Punkrobot Animation Studio)
• Carface (Autos Portraits)
  Claude Cloutier, director
  (National Film Board of Canada)
• If I Was God…
  Cordell Barker, director
  (National Film Board of Canada)
• Love in the Time of March Madness
  Melissa Johnson and Robertino Zambrano, directors
  (High Hip Productions and KAPWA Studioworks)
• My Home
  Phuong Mai Nguyen, director
  (Papy3D Productions)
• An Object at Rest
  Seth Boyden, director
  (California Institute of the Arts)
• Prologue
  Richard Williams, director, and Imogen Sutton, producer
  (Animation Masterclass)
• Sanjay’s Super Team
  Sanjay Patel, director, and Nicole Grindle, producer
  (Pixar Animation Studios)
• We Can’t Live without Cosmos
  Konstantin Bronzit, director
  (Melnitsa Animation Studio)
• World of Tomorrow
  Don Hertzfeldt, director
  (Bitter Films)

Members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch viewed all the eligible entries in the preliminary round of voting. The members of that branch will now select five nominees from among these 10 films. Branch screenings will be held in Los Angeles, London, New York, and San Francisco in December.

The nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 14, 2016.

A few observations:

* Four of the ten shortlisted filmmakers have previous Oscar nominations: Don Hertzfeldt, Richard Williams, Konstantin Bronzit, and Cordell Barker.

* While not exactly a surprise (the film qualified at four festivals), the Chilean film Bear Story should be noted, as it aims to become the first animated short ever from Chile to receive an Oscar nod.

* Seth Boyden’s short An Object at Rest is a CalArts student film. It wouldn’t be the first time a CalArts film has received an Oscar nod; Vanessa Schwartz’s The Janitor was nominated in 1994 and there may be other examples, too.

* The French short My Home by Phuong Mai Nguyen is also currently shortlisted for a César, France’s equivalent of the Oscar.

* The animation categories are guaranteed to be heavily male-centric this year. Just two of the ten shortlisted shorts have women directors, and none of the contending animated features were directed by a woman. Compare this to the this year’s César shortlist, in which 8 of the 12 films were directed by women. Women make animated films; the Academy chooses not to recognize them.