This year, those responsible for picking the shorts didn’t need any extra impetus to pick unique, independent, international, student, or challenging films. It’s an impressive shortlist, and it looks more like something you’d see at a festival than what we’ve come to expect from the Academy.
A few high-profile names appear on this year’s shortlist including two-time Oscar nominees Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby (who has a third on her own), BAFTA nominee Elizabeth Hobbs, multi-award-winning Argentine Juan Pablo Zaramella, and Slovenian standout Špela Čadež. Mostly missing this year are the big-budget, commercial short films from major studios that have found a lot of love in the category in recent years.
There is some exciting new talent on this year’s shortlist, too. João Gonzalez’s Ice Merchants is only his second film, while Robert-Jonathan Koeyers’ It’s Nice in Here and Lachlan Pendragon’s An Ostrich Told Me… are debuts; the latter has already won a Student Academy Award.
From the feature film shortlists announced on Wednesday, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was picked for sound, original score, and original song (“Ciao Papa”).
And ten films made the vfx shortlist this year in what looks like it would be an incredibly tight race if James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water didn’t feel like such a strong favorite.
Visual Effects
- All Quiet on the Western Front (Netflix)
- Avatar: The Way of Water (20th Century Studios)
- The Batman (Warner Bros.)
- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (Marvel Studios)
- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Marvel Studios)
- Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore (Warner Bros.)
- Jurassic World: Dominion (Universal Pictures)
- Nope (Universal Pictures)
- Thirteen Lives (Amazon Studios/MGM)
- Top Gun: Maverick (Paramount Pictures)
