2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films | Animation

Every year five short films from across the globe are nominated for an Academy Award and in the process receive a tremendous amount of positive exposure. For new filmmakers, an Oscar nomination can fast-track future projects or help highlight the underlying messages, political themes or social views within the short film itself.

The Academy Awards has historically received a lot of criticism for the lack of diversity in their award selections. The short film categories have always been an exception with a selection of films drawn from a worldwide pool. The 2022 program features films from Canada, Chile, Denmark, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and The United States of America.

Interfilm Berlin has put together two programs that will be released in cinemas across Germany. Five Animated short films will be included in one 90 minute program and five live-action short films will be presented in a separate two-hour program.

FILM INFO:

Affairs of the Art
UK/CANADA/16 MIN/2021
Director
JOANNA QUINN
Synopsis
“With Affairs of the Art, director Joanna Quinn and producer/screenwriter Les Mills continue the series of beloved, hilarious and award-winning animated UK films starring Beryl, a 59-year-old factory worker who’s obsessed with drawing and determined to become a hyper-futurist artiste. We also meet her grown son, Colin, a techno geek, her husband, Ifor, now Beryl’s model and muse, and her sister, Beverly, a fanatical narcissist living in LA. Affairs of the Art provides glimpses into Beryl’s, Beverly’s and Colin’s peculiar childhoods, and we see that obsession is in this family’s DNA. The first co-production between Beryl Productions International and the National Film Board of Canada, Affairs of the Art features Quinn’s signature hand-drawn animation with attitude and Mills’ raucously humorous scenarios, in an endearing romp through one family’s eccentric addictions.”

Bestia
CHILE/16 MIN/2021
Director
HUGO COVARRUBIAS
Synopsis
Inspired by real events, Bestia enters the life of a secret police agent in the military dictatorship in Chile. The relationship with her dog, her body, her fears and frustrations, reveal a macabre fracture in her mind and a country.

Boxballet
RUSSIA/15 MIN/2021
Director
ANTON DYAKOV
Synopsis
One day, a delicate ballerina named Olya meets the rough, surly boxer Evgeny. The contrast between their worlds and their philosophies is so sharp that even the possibility of these two characters crossing paths seems incredible.

Robin Robin
UK/31 MIN/2021
Director
DAN OJARI, MIKEY PLEASE
Synopsis
ROBIN ROBIN, an Aardman Production is the tale of a small bird with a very big heart. After a shaky nativity of her own – her unhatched egg falls out of the nest and into a rubbish dumpster – she comes out of her shell, in more ways than one, and is adopted by a loving family of mice burglars. More beak and feathers than fur, tail and ears, more cluck and klutz than tip-toe and stealth, she is nonetheless beloved by her adopted family, a Dad Mouse and four siblings. As she grows up, though, her differences make her something of a liability, especially when the family take her on furtive food raids to the houses of the humans (pronounced ‘Who-mans’) in the dead of night. Neither fully bird, nor fully mouse, Robin embarks on a food heist of her own to prove herself worthy of her family and also, hopefully, to bring them back a Christmas sandwich. Along the way, she encounters a curmudgeonly magpie who has a house full of glittery things that he’s stolen and, as it turns out, an unlikely heart of gold. He has set that heart on stealing the sparkling star from the top of a local who-man family’s Christmas tree. And who better to help him than the eternally optimistic Robin herself. The adventure brings them face-to-terrifying-face with a menacing, yet very cool Cat, who has a warm place for birds and mice alike: her tummy. Can they survive? Can they bring home the sandwich and the star? And, most of all, can Robin discover, and learn to love, who she really is, delighting her family and earning her wings in the process?

The Windshield Wiper
SPAIN/15 MIN/2021
Director
ALBERTO MIELGO
Synopsis
Inside a cafe while smoking a whole pack of cigarettes, a man poses an ambitious question: “What is Love?”. A collection of vignettes and situations will lead the man to the desired conclusion.