57 Shorts Are in the Oscar Game This Year

Last weekend, a total of 57 animated shorts which had qualified to compete in the Oscar race were screened in New York. Thanks to animator Michael Sporn’s (Poe) fantastic blog, we now have the list of these 57 qualifying toons. The New York screening was organized by Patrick Harrison and John Fahr. The number of shorts is a vast jump from two years ago when we only had 33 titles and much better than 2011 when 45 shorts were entered in the race. The Academy animation branch have voted on these shorts and the next stage of the game will only feature 10 titles on the short list (which will probably be announced in the next few weeks). Of those ten, five will make it to the Oscar ballot in January.

We loved seeing some of our favorite shorts of the year popping up on the list, which is a very healthy mix of studio produced titles such as Disney’s Paperman, Fox’s Maggie Simpson in The Longest Daycare and Warner Bros.’ Daffy’s Rhapsody and indies like  Hisko Hulsing’s Junkyard, Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels’ Oh Willy…, Michaela Pavlatova’s Tram and Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog.

Here is the complete list of qualifying titles (in alphabetical order):

• 7596 Frames (directed by Martin Georgiev)

• Adam and Dog (directed by Minkyu Lee)

• Amazonia (directed by Sam Chen)

• Being Bradford Dillman (directed by Emma Birch)

• Belly (directed by Julia Pott)

• Body Memory (directed by Ülo Pikkov)

• Bydlo (directed by Patrick Bouchard)

• Cadaver (directed by Jonah D. Ansell)

• Chase (directed by Tomas Vergara)

• Combustible (directed by Katsuhiro Otomo)

• Daffy’s Rhapsody (directed by Matthew O’Callaghan)

• Dell’ Ammazzare Il Maiale (Killing the Pig) (directed by Simone Massi)

• Dripped (directed by Leo Verriere)

• The Eagleman Stag (directed by Michael Please)

• Edmond Was a Donkey (directed by Franck Dion)

• The Fall of the House of Usher (directed by Raul Garcia)

• Fear of Flying (directed by Conor Finnegan)

• Fresh Guacamole (directed by PES)

• The Game *

• The Gruffalo’s Child (directed by Johannes Weiland and Uwe Heidschoetter)

• Head Over Heels (directed by Timothy Reckart)

• Here and the Great Elsewhere (directed by Michele Lemieux)

• House of Monsters (directed by Dawn Brown)

• The Hybrid Union (directed by Serguei Kouchnerov)

• I Hate You, Red Light (directed by J.M. Walter and M.R. Horhager)

• I Saw Mice Burying a Cat (directed by Dmitri Geller)

• It’s Such a Beautiful Day (directed by Don Hertzfeldt)

• Junkyard (directed by Hisko Hulsing)

• Kara (directed by David Cage)

• Kali the Little Vampire (directed by Regina Pessoa)

• Kubla Khan (directed by Joan Gratz)

• La Détente (directed by Pierre Ducos and Bertrand Bey)

• The Last Bus (directed by Martin Snopek and Ivana Laucikova)

• Lost and Found (directed by Joan Gratz)

• Maggie Simpson in ‘The Longest Daycare’ (directed by David Silverman)

• The Maker (directed by Christopher Kezelos)

• The Making of Longbird (directed by Will Anderson)

• The Missing Key (directed by Jonathan Nix)

• Oh Willy… (directed by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels)

• Overcast (directed by James Lancett and Sean Weston)

• Paperman (directed by John Kahrs)

• Pepe & Lucas (Brainzoo Studios)

• Pasteurized (directed by Nicolas Villareal)

• The Pub (directed by Jospeh Pierce)

• Sammy *

• Shift (directed by Daniel Trenkle)

• Reflexion (directed by Yoshimichi Tamura & Fabrice Senia)

• Slow Derek (directed by Dan Ojari)

• The Story of Pines (directed by Musa Brooker)

• The Tale of a String *

• Traces (directed by Scott Stark)

• Tram (directed by Michaela Pavlatova)

• Wiggle Room (directed by Joe Schenkenberg)

• The Wind Girl (La Nina de Viento) (directed by Nicolas Lara)

• Wolf Dog Tales (directed by Bernadine Santistevan)

• Zeinek Gehiago Iraun (Who Lasts Longer) (directed by Gregorio Muro)

* We couldn’t track down any info on The Game, Sammy or The Tale of a String, so if you know anything about these three shorts, please email us or leave the info in comments section.