Animation and VFX Nominees for the 96th Academy Awards Are Announced

This morning, the nominations for the 96th Academy Awards were announced at 5:30 in 24 categories. Here are this year’s animation and VFX nominees:

Best Animated Feature:

• The Boy and the Heron (Director: Hayao Miyazaki) Studio Ghibli/GKIDS
• Elemental (Director: Peter Sohn) Disney/Pixar
• Nimona  (Directors: Nick Bruno, Troy Quane) Netflix
• Robot Dreams (Director: Pablo Berger) Arcadia/Neon
• Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Directors: Joaquim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson) Sony Pictures Animation

Best Animated Short:

• Letter to a Pig (Director: Tal Kantor)
• Ninety-Five Senses (Directors: Jared Hess and Jerusha Hess)
• Our Uniform (Director: Yegane Moghaddam)
• Pachyderme (Director: Stéphanie Clément)
• War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko (Director: Dave Mullins)

Visual Effects:

• The Creator (Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts and Neil Corbould)
• Godzilla Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima)
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams and Theo Bialek)
• Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland and Neil Corbould)
• Napoleon (Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco and Neil Corbould)

Surprises:  While most award experts had predicted the nomination of Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron, Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Pixar’s Elemental, Pablo Berger’s critically acclaimed movie Robot Dreams was definitely a dark horse title. Although the 2D animated Spanish movie, which is handled by Neon, has not yet been released in the U.S., it’s a favorite of many in the animation world. It has also been nominated for five Annie Awards and four Goyas, and won the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature.

Among the animated feature no-shows were Illumination’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Aardman/Netflix’s Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget, Disney’s Wish, DreamWorks’ Trolls Band Together and Crunchyroll’s Suzume.

The Animated Shorts category also offered its share of surprises. Several nominees deal with serious, dark themes such as war, the Holocaust and child abuse. Letter to a Pig is directed by Israeli filmmaker Tal Kantor, and is an award-winning short that debuted at the Annecy Festival in 2022. Yegane Moghaddam’s Our Uniform is the first animated short by an Iranian filmmaker to be nominated. War Is Over!, which is directed by Pixar alumni Dave Mullins, was co-written by Sean Ono Lennon and produced by Peter Jackson. Ninety-five Senses is directed by Jared and Jerusha Hess, best known for live-action films such as as Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre.

Among the popular shortlisted titles that didn’t make it to the final list of nominees were Dan Abraham and Trent Corey’s Once Upon a Studio, Flora Ana Buda’s 27, John Musker’s I’m Hip and Rita Basulto’s Humo. 

Sadly, no animated features appeared on the Best Picture, Best Song or Best Music nomination lists this year.

Last year, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix) won the Best Animated Feature, while the prize for Best Animated Short went to Peter Baynton and Charlie Mackesy’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Apple TV+). Avatar: The Way of Water was the winner of the Best Visual Effects Oscar.

The 96th edition of the Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, March 10, beginning at 4 p.m (PDT) at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network. Jimmy Kimmel will host the ceremony for the fourth time. The event will also be televised in more than 200 countries worldwide.

See oscars.org for the complete list of nominees.