93rd Oscars: ‘Soul’, ‘If Anything Happens I Love You’ Win Animation Honors

The Academy of Motion Pictures presented the 93rd Oscars Sunday evening, broadcast on ABC and live streamed to multiple platforms from L.A.’s Union Station and the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood.

Pre-awards bets paid off for Disney-Pixar’s Soul, which won the Animated Feature Film prize for director Pete Docter and producer Dana Murray. Co-directed by Kemp Powers, the film has scored an 11th category victory for Pixar Animation Studios — 14th for the combined Disney-Pixar studios. It also marks Docter’s third Oscar win out of nine nominations in this and other categories.

“This film started as a love letter to jazz. But we had no idea how much jazz would teach us about life,” Docter said in accepting the award.

Soul adds the Oscar to its collection of animated feature honors from the Golden Globes, PGAs, BAFTAs, Critics Choice Super Awards, the Annie Awards (with six additional wins) and many others. As predicted,  Soul also won the Academy Award for Best Score (Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Jon Batiste).

The Animated Short Film award went to If Anything Happens I Love You, Will McCormack and Michael Govier’s touching 2D short about a couple’s struggle after losing a child in a school shooting. The short, which has previously been awarded at the Bucheon and Los Angeles animation festivals and WorldFest Houston, is available to stream on Netflix.

Christopher Nolan’s Tenet won the Visual Effects Oscar, with the accolade going to Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley and Scott Fisher. The thriller had already picked up the VFX BAFTA, among many more wins and nominations from festivals, guilds and critics groups.

Animated Features

• Onward – Dan Scanlon and Kori Rae
• Over the Moon – Glen Keane, Gennie Rim and Peilin Chou
• A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon – Richard Phelan, Will Becher and Paul Kewley
• Wolfwalkers – Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, Paul Young and Stéphan Roelants
• WINNER: Soul – Pete Docter and Dana Murray

Animated Shorts

• Burrow – Madeline Sharafian and Michael Capbarat
• Genius Loci – Adrien Mérigeau and Amaury Ovise
• Opera – Erick Oh
• Yes-People – Gísli Darri Halldórsson and Arnar Gunnarsson
• WINNER: If Anything Happens I Love You – Will McCormack and Michael Govier

Visual Effects

• Love and Monsters – Matt Sloan, Genevieve Camilleri, Matt Everitt and Brian Cox
• The Midnight Sky – Matthew Kasmir, Christopher Lawrence, Max Solomon and David Watkins
• Mulan – Sean Faden, Anders Langlands, Seth Maury and Steve Ingram
• The One and Only Ivan – Nick Davis, Greg Fisher, Ben Jones and Santiago Colomo Martinez
• WINNER: Tenet – Andrew Jackson, David Lee, Andrew Lockley and Scott Fisher

You can see all the category nominees and find more info at oscars.org.