The 96th Academy Awards category for animated shorts showcases a delightful array of creative talent, celebrating 15 nominees across three key short-film categories: animated, live action, and documentary. This year’s animated shorts lineup has been thoughtfully expanded to include two additional “highly commended” films that made the nomination shortlist, ensuring a robust 80-minute viewing experience. In contrast, the documentary and live action compilations run over two hours each, with 140 minutes dedicated to documentaries and 139 minutes to live-action shorts.
This year’s nominees boast impressive names, including John Lennon, Wes Anderson, Benedict Cumberbatch, and former HBO documentaries chief Sheila Nevins. Carter Pilcher, founder and CEO of Shorts TV, highlights that this is an exciting period for the shorts industry, with Shorts TV continuing its long-standing tradition of distributing Oscar-nominated short films to theaters for nearly two decades.
WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko
Plot: Set in an alternate WWI reality where a senseless war rages on, two soldiers on opposite sides of the conflict play a joyful game of chess. A heroic carrier pigeon delivers the soldiers' chess moves over the battlefield as the fighting escalates. Neither soldier knows his opponent as the game and the war builds to its climatic final move. Whoever wins the game, one thing is for certain: there are no winners in war.
Letter to a Pig
Plot: A Holocaust survivor reads a letter he wrote to the pig who saved his life. A young schoolgirl hears his testimony in class and sinks into a twisted dream where she confronts questions of identity, collective trauma, and the extremes of human nature.
Ninety-Five Senses
Plot: A heartfelt depiction of a man facing his own mortality while reflecting on the grave mistakes of his youth.
Our Uniform
Plot: An Iranian girl unfolds her school memories through the wrinkles and fabrics of her old uniform. She admits that she's nothing but a "female" and explores the roots of this idea in her school years.
Pachyderm
Plot: As every summer, Louise is entrusted to her grand-parents for a few days of vacation in the country. The green grass of the garden, the swimming in the lake, the fishing with Grandpa, everything seems as sweet as Grandma's strawberry pies. Yet this year, the snow will fall in summer and a monster will die.
Honorable Mentions
I'm Hip
Plot: A self-absorbed cat, in a jazzy song and dance, proudly and comically proclaims his "hipness' to the world. The world is less convinced than he is.
Wild Summon
Plot: A natural history fantasy film, following the dramatic lifecycle of the wild salmon in human form, with narration by Marianne Faithfull.
