Oscars 2019 Category Breakdown: Best Animated Short

Here’s how this works: every day leading up to the Oscars, I break down each of the 24 categories. The goal is to both familiarize everyone with the category itself (how it works, what its history is and how you go about figuring out what’s gonna win) while also making it easier to reference when I write my giant article with picks and everything. A lot of the leg work is already here. But really, the goal is to see if there’s anything to look for leading into Oscar night that could be a shortcut to me picking the category.

What we do is — I give you all the winners of the category throughout history, go over all the recent trends if there are any, discuss the precursors and whether or not they matter, and then we talk about this year’s category and how we got to it, and then just look at where we are and rank the nominees in terms of their likelihood of winning (at the current moment in time. Of course, things can and will change going into the ceremony). It’s all pretty simple. I’ve done this every year. Everyone should know the drill.

Today is Best Animated Short. AKA, “It’s probably Pixar or Disney again, isn’t it?

Good news, bad news. Bad news — no real precursors here, so we go in cold and just have to guess. Good news… you can usually do it pretty easily and know what the probably winner is.

What’s funny to me is that most people assume Pixar or Disney is gonna win this category. And for a lot of years, that wasn’t true. Pixar won in 2001 and then neither they nor Disney won again since 2012. And either Disney or Pixar, admittedly has won 4 times since 2012, but it’s on average of every other year. Paperman in 2012, Feast in 2014, Piper in 2016, Bao in 2018. So we’re on pace for a non-Pixar year this year. Which seems like it’s gonna check out.

But let’s first get into our category:

Best Animated Short

Dcera (Daughter)

Hair Love

Kitbull

Mémorable

Sister

The shortlist wasn’t overly strong this year. Of the ones that didn’t make it: Hors Piste was a very comic short that felt like it could have gotten on. He Can’t Live Without Cosmos is a sequel (I guess) to the previously nominated astronaut short from a few years ago. Mind My Mind is a short about autism, I believe. The Physics of Sorrow is a similar short to the director’s previously nominated effort Blind Vaysha, and Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days is a girl reminiscing about her uncle, who was essentially nobody but meant a lot to her. I was only able to see Hors Piste and Uncle Thomas, and I liked them both quite a bit, specifically Uncle Thomas.

Only two of these shorts are available to watch in full, so here you go:

Hair Love:

Kitbull:

Dcera and Sister were online at one point but were taken down. And Mémorable has never been available.

Sister is a short about a Chinese man thinking back to his relationship with his sister (done in gorgeous stop-motion) and then revealing that he never had a sister, because of China’s One Child Policy. Dcera is a gorgeously directed short about the relationship between a father and a daughter. And Memorable is about a painter who is starting to get dementia and the effects it has on him and his wife.

Rankings:

5. Dcera — It’s sutuningly animated. There’s no denying that. And in a similar way to Memorable, too. However, it’s a very personal, dramatic and serious kind of short. And those never win. They’ll get nominated, but they never win in an open vote. Hard to see this as more than a third choice at best.

4. Sister — It’s gorgeous and stop-motion, but it feels of a sort to other shorts that didn’t win in recent years. They generally like colorful, cute and uplifting. And this is none of those things. Maybe the emotional gut punch of the ending will get it some votes, but I’m not thinking this is more than a third choice in the end. And even then, if people see them all, I can’t see how they vote for this one.

3. Mémorable — It’s absolutely stunning. Dcera does a similar stop-motion thing, but goes for a very hardcore vérité kind of feel with a camera that moves and makes everything really… Paul Greengrass. This one doesn’t do that but does more magical things with the elements within the frame, distorting reality to put you in the mind of this man with dementia. In the trailer, there’s a cellphone that becomes a blob of paint that starts to float in the air as he watches it. And at the end, when his wife becomes an almost invisible being except for some splashes of paint… it’s just stunning. Honestly, I can see them possibly even voting for this. I’m keeping it the third choice just because of what the other two are, but this can win. This really can win. If people watch all five of these, this will get some votes because it’s so well done. It doesn’t feel like something that wins, but it’s something that will sway a few people in an otherwise weak/forgettable category.

2. Kitbull — It’s Pixar. BUT…. it’s Pixar light. It’s part of their SparkShorts program, which is them giving people an unlimited budget and six months to make whatever they want. This is a short directed and produced by women, which is nice, but the short doesn’t have that pop that you’d expect out of a Pixar short (at least for me). I’m not sure people would know this is Pixar necessarily in an open vote by just looking at the nominees. Plus, it’s not like they win every single year they’re nominated. This feels like a time when they’re not the automatic favorite or presumed winner. I think in the end I’ll probably make this the third choice and let it beat me. But you can’t ignore Pixar in this category. You can’t ever do that. But because they do have a fairly weak history in this category historically. They didn’t win at all between 2001 and 2016. Piper was their first winner. And then Bao last year. And it’s not like they weren’t nominated — Sanjay’s Super Team, Lou, La Luna, Day & Night… people either just wouldn’t vote for them in the early years and didn’t vote for their weaker efforts in recent years. And this feels like a weaker effort most people wouldn’t know or care about. So I’ll respect it and keep it second here, but in the end, I don’t know if this actually contends.

1. Hair Love — I think people are aware of what this one is. I think awareness is out there, and I think it’s a lovely short with a great message. Not that anyone really pays attention to this category while they vote, but this does feel like the feel-good short that would lose to a Pixar nominee like Piper (which is cute and looks stunning but is ultimately just okay) in most years. But, in the absence of one of those shorts in this category, I feel like this is the favorite and the choice that’s most likely to win. Usually you need a modicum of notoriety or the clear emotional advantage (and you can see a short, like The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore or Bear Story, to know it’s going to win). I think this has that notoriety. Maybe Kitbull or Memorable ends up winning instead, but I feel like this is currently the top choice, with a slight edge over everything else in terms of likelihood of winning.

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