Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films of 2023

I was lucky enough to catch all this year’s Oscar nominated Animated Short films at my local AMC one afternoon and I’m happy to report we have a great batch of beautifully animated shorts to add to Oscar history. Let’s break them down.

Letter to a Pig

Directed by Tal Kantor, Letter to a Pig illustrates a Holocaust survivor recalling his traumatic tale to a classroom of students. Visually, the animation is very sketchy and characters are scrawled in Picasso-esce black and white manner. As a character comes to life more on the screen, they get more visual detail, until they’re nearly ___real life. While this film may be very abstract for some, both visually and in narrative, the ideas of passing down these stories and placing them into the consciousness of today’s youth is present and hard to miss. 

Ninety-Five Senses

An old man tells us about his life using the five senses and you’ll never guess the turn this story takes. Directed by Jerusha and Jared Hess (the married duo behind Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre) each sense is animated in its own unique style, yet they all blend together marvelously as they tell this story that left me nearly in tears. Just go find it, I don’t want to risk spoiling it for you. 

Pachyderme

From France and sporting impressionist style artwork, Pachyderme depicts memories of a woman’s time spent at her grandparents’ house as a young girl. The moments are not all cheery. The visual mix between fantasy and reality make this film very poetic, wonderful and help us understand what happened to the narrator without her having to be explicit.

War is Over!

Of all the styles of animation presented among the shorts, War is Over! sports the most traditional. Written by Sean Lennon and inspired from John and Yoko’s song of the same title, this film depicts soldiers at opposite sides of a war using a carrier pigeon to have a game of chess, but they are not aware they are enemies. While I found this film underwhelming, I suspect it could win simply because of the big names attached to it. 

Our Uniform

Clocking in at just seven minutes, Our Uniform is the shortest of the shorts, but may have also been the most tedious to create. By Yegane Moghaddam, this film is about the school uniforms girls wear in Iran. What makes this film so unique is that it is painted on pieces of clothing and utilizes stop motion animation to make the paintings come to life on the fabrics, often moving with the wrinkles and folds. It’s beautiful to watch the images on the uniforms come to life, even swerving around buttons and walking along measuring tape! I have never seen anything like it, and for that, Our Uniform is my favorite of the five nominees.