11 Days of Canadian and International Cinema
Oscar Nominated Short Films - Animated
The Academy has been honoring animated shorts since 1932, when Walt Disney’s Flowers and Trees took home the very first award. Disney still holds the record with 12 wins in this category. Tom and Jerry racked up seven. Nick Park won three for Creature Comforts and the Wallace & Gromit films. This year’s crop couldn’t be more different from one another: you’ve got oil-painted Holocaust memories, a Christian allegory about a bear cub and a tree, stop-motion nightmare fuel from Canada, an Irish retirement meditation, and a ribald Russian comedy about three sisters on an island. Five wildly different styles, five wildly different stories. That’s the beauty of this category. It reminds you that animation isn’t a genre. It’s a medium.
Éiru (shortlisted extra short)
When the water mysteriously disappears from the well in a warrior clan's village, an intrepid child descends into the belly of the earth to retrieve it.
Dir. Giovanna Ferrari | Ireland | 2025 | 13 min. | In English
Though not one of the five official nominees, Éiru was included in the theatrical screening package as a shortlisted title, and I’m glad it was. Produced by Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation studio behind The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner, and Wolfwalkers, it carries their signature visual beauty. All four of Cartoon Saloon’s feature films received Best Animated Feature nominations, and their short Late Afternoon was nominated too. Éiru tells the story of an intrepid child who descends into the belly of the earth to retrieve water that’s mysteriously vanished from her warrior clan’s village. It’s spirited, nicely done, and exactly the kind of lore-driven adventure that families with bold youngsters will get a kick out of. I hope it finds a home on physical media at some point, because it deserves a wider audience than a bonus slot in a shorts package.
Retirement Plan
In the throes of his overstimulated, energy poor midlife, Ray fantasises about everything he'd love to do in retirement, once he finally has the "time."
Dir. John Kelly | Ireland | 2024 | 7 min. | In English
At just seven minutes, this is the shortest nominee, and it uses every second wisely. Domhnall Gleeson voices a middle-aged man daydreaming about all the things he’ll finally do when he retires. The first half is light and whimsical, spinning through fantasy scenarios with a breezy charm. Then something shifts. Slowly, without you noticing, the film pulls you into its orbit and tightens its grip. Certain lines and images just sock you right in the solar plexus. Director John Kelly was partly inspired by his own father, who had an active retirement but passed away during production. That loss clearly deepened the second half, where the character’s deterioration becomes impossible to ignore. It’s the kind of short that feels like it’s spinning its wheels until you realize it’s been drawing you closer all along. As someone whose mother just retired, I’d love to see this adapted into an illustrated book for adults. The imagery is rich enough to sustain it, and the emotional punch would only grow on the page.
Butterfly
In the sea, a man swims. As he does, memories come to the surface. From his early childhood to his life as a man, all his memories are linked to water.
Dir. Florence Miailhe | France | 2024 | 15 min. | In French with English subtitles
Florence Miailhe’s oil-painted animated short traces the life of Alfred Nakache, a French swimmer of Algerian Jewish descent who competed at the 1936 Berlin Olympics and survived Auschwitz. The animation style is unlike anything else in this lineup. It’s lush, fluid, almost dream-like, and it takes a minute to let yourself sink into its rhythm. Do that, though, and the story hooks you. What begins as sun-drenched memories of the sea gradually darkens as history closes in. Like the insect of its title, the film transforms into something more beautiful and devastating than you’d expect from its opening moments. Miailhe started working on this in 2015, when she saw early signs of authoritarianism returning across Europe. Her timing feels uncomfortably prescient now. Producer Ron Dyens noted the film is meant to honor Nakache, but also to alert. Don’t count this one out as a dark horse. Its simplicity is what makes its effect so lasting. Nakache’s final words in the film send young swimmers off with: “Go, little fish. We are not afraid.”
The Girl Who Cried Pearls
A haunting fable about a girl overwhelmed by sorrow, the boy who loves her, and how greed leads good hearts to wicked deeds.
Dirs. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski | Canada | 2025 | 17 min. | In English
The stop-motion animation here is downright stunning. The movement, the dexterity, the textures. It’s some of the best craftsmanship I’ve ever seen in the medium. The figures themselves, though? Terrifying. If the dead-eyed passengers in The Polar Express kept you up at night, steer clear. The bulging orbs on display here look almost painful, an entire cast doing stupid human tricks with their eye sockets. Set in early 20th-century Montreal, the story follows a poor boy who discovers a neglected girl whose tears produce actual pearls. A greedy pawnbroker gets involved, and what unfolds is a dark, surreal fable that deliberately avoids the tidy moral you’d expect. The filmmakers have said they found the idea of telling a classic moral fable in the 21st century absurd, so they set it at the moment when that romantic worldview was cracking apart. I liked this one quite a lot, right up until the ending. It thinks it’s pulling the rug out. It’s really taking a face plant.
Forevergreen
An orphaned bear cub finds a home with a fatherly evergreen tree, until his hunger for trash leads him to danger.
Dirs. Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears | USA | 2025 | 13 min. | No Dialogue
An orphaned bear cub is taken in by a fatherly evergreen tree who offers food, shelter, and lessons through the changing seasons. The animation is gorgeous, the emotional arc is clean, and at 13 minutes it never overstays its welcome. This is the textbook example of what a great animated short looks like. It’s contained, it’s touching, it’s the one audiences will respond to best because it’s the most familiar. You could easily see it playing before a Pixar film as the perfect appetizer to something bigger and louder. The filmmakers have been open about its Christian allegory roots, inspired by a folktale called “The Tale of the Three Trees” and the parable of the Prodigal Son. To their credit, the message isn’t hammered home too hard. Spears put it simply: they’d do anything for their kids, no matter what choices they make. That sentiment comes through without feeling preachy, and the final sacrifice lands with real weight. A lovely, well-crafted piece.
The Three Sisters
Three sisters living on an isolated island must rent out one of their houses.
Dir. Konstantin Bronzit | Cyprus/Russia | 2024 | 14 min. | No Dialogue
So charming. So funny. So unexpectedly ribald. Why this wasn’t flagged under the “inappropriate for children” section is beyond me. Konstantin Bronzit, receiving his third Oscar nomination, delivers a light, line-drawn tale of three sisters living on a tiny island whose peaceful existence gets upended by the arrival of a blunt sailor. It plays like a Golden Girls episode reimagined as a silent cartoon, and I loved it far more than I expected. These dialogue-free animated shorts can be genuinely hilarious when the filmmakers understand physical comedy and satirical timing, and Bronzit nails both. The sheer amount of storytelling packed into 14 minutes is impressive. Characters have full arcs. The comedy escalates perfectly. And the ending manages to be both silly and sweet. Bronzit has said he wanted to make something life-affirming, a film that leaves you believing everything will be fine. Mission accomplished. It would be a perfectly worthy winner, but either way, it’s a treat.
Don’t forget to check out Live Action & Documentary!