{"id":180083,"date":"2026-02-16T12:59:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/180083\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T12:59:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T12:59:22","slug":"oscars-2026-your-guide-to-the-5-nominated-animated-shorts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/180083\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscars 2026: Your guide to the 5 nominated animated shorts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The 2026 Oscar-nominated animated shorts mix the past and the present, fable and nonfiction. Some even look into the future, whether we like what they see or not.<\/p>\n

\u2018Butterfly\u2019 \"Animated <\/p>\n

Florence Miailhe\u2019s oil-painted memory play tells of Alfred Nakache, a French swimmer of Algerian Jewish descent who finished ahead of Nazi competitors at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, joined the Resistance and survived Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I first thought about the film, I thought about this old man swimming in the sea and then diving and there were bubbles of memories coming back to him,\u201d says the C\u00e9sar-winning Miailhe of the fluidity of time in her subject\u2019s mind.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not surprised the film\u2019s themes \u2014 the rise of authoritarianism, the persecution of minorities \u2014 feel contemporary now: \u201cWhen I started this, in 2015, there were the first signs that these types of things would come again in the near future,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat is really surprising is how fast it goes and how it feels like we are in a bad movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

Producer Ron Dyens says, though the film is primarily meant to honor Nakache, \u201cOften, we do a movie to alert, to prevent. The National Front<\/a> is growing in France.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, says Dyens, we should remember Nakache\u2019s last words in the movie, sending young pupils off to swim: \u201cGo, little fish. We are not afraid.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Forevergreen\u2019 \"Animated <\/p>\n

(Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears)<\/p>\n

In Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears\u2019 film, a bear cub is cared for by a benevolent tree on a cliffside. The cub\u2019s selfish decisions lead to the tree laying itself across a chasm to save its surrogate child. If that sounds metaphorical, it\u2019s meant to be.<\/p>\n

Engelhardt says, \u201cIn 2017, I had just dealt with, I would say, a spiritual depression, a season of seeking after God. Then I came across a book called \u2018The Tale of the Three Trees.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThree Trees\u201d is a Christian folktale in which trees with lofty aspirations end up with very different uses than they had dreamed of, finding fulfillment instead in God\u2019s plans for them. \u201cIf God could use these kind of broken dreams, broken vessels, and turn \u2019em into something really great,\u201d says Engelhardt, \u201cwell, maybe God could use me too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spears says of their Prodigal Son<\/a>-inspired short, \u201cIt\u2019s our way of showing how far God would go, across the divide. Everyone can identify with the idea of forgiveness and unearned grace.\u201d<\/p>\n

Spears says, \u201cIt was a very personal thing on multiple levels for us. We would do anything for our kids, no matter what choices they make.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Girl Who Cried Pearls\u2019 \"Animated <\/p>\n

(National Film Board of Canada)<\/p>\n

In a meticulously crafted stop-motion world of gritty dockside poverty, a starving waif discovers the neglected girl in a shabby home weeps not teardrops but pearls. A greedy pawnbroker gets involved, and the pieces are in place for a fable \u2014 a surreal one, without the customary lesson at the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt that telling a classic, moral fable in the 21st century was absurd,\u201d says co-auteur Chris Lavis. \u201cSo we set it in the beginning of the 20th century, when we felt that whole romantic worldview was just about to crack and fall off a cliff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Co-auteur Maciek Szczerbowski says in stories such as those of Hans Christian Andersen, \u201cThe moral seemed to be that the more you suffer, the more guaranteed is your entrance to heaven. We don\u2019t believe in that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of the film\u2019s tantalizing ending, Szczerbowski says, \u201cWhen you leave something open-ended enough that a viewer can infuse themselves into the story and add their own emotional maturity into it, I think that makes a story a little bit richer.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Retirement Plan\u2019 \"Animated <\/p>\n

John Kelly and Andrew Freedman\u2019s light, contemplative film reads as a hopeful look at retirement and beyond. In the first half, we see the retiree trying the things he\u2019d imagined he would as a younger man; in the second, we become aware of him aging, a reminder that retirement is not a static state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was inspired a little bit by my dad, who had a very active retirement,\u201d says Kelly. \u201cHe passed away during the making of the film. We\u2019d already storyboarded and scripted, but that compelled me to go deeper, emotionally, and search for something more truthful in the second half, when the character does undergo this sort of deterioration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freedman says, \u201cWe\u2019re all under extreme pressure today to live, to buy houses, to work. I find the whole film a refreshing reminder that we only have one go through [in] life. It is quite a universal experience, I think, whether you\u2019re young or old, to reflect upon your own life: \u2018Am I doing the right thing?\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018The Three Sisters\u2019 \"Animated <\/p>\n

(Polydont Films \/ Everett Collection)<\/p>\n

Yes, it\u2019s Russian. Yes, it\u2019s \u201cThe Three Sisters.\u201d No, not that \u201cThree Sisters.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA friend of mine told me a story that hooked me: Three sisters live soul-to-soul, but their peaceful existence is disrupted by a man who suddenly appears,\u201d writes animator Konstantin Bronzit, recipient of his third Oscar nomination, via email. \u201cI\u2019m very glad that I\u2019m surprising the audience with the fact that it\u2019s not Chekhov.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, it\u2019s a light, line-drawn tale of sisters on a tiny island forgetting themselves, then remembering.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to make a light, life-affirming movie. I wanted to leave the viewers with the hope that, no matter what, everything would be fine. We have to believe in something.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 Oscar-nominated animated shorts mix the past and the present, fable and nonfiction. Some even look into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":180084,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[85503,85507,85505,85506,85502,85501,1924,14876,48,52,51,479,47,50,49,85504,8523,13036,8820,3044,4610],"class_list":{"0":"post-180083","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-alfred-nakache","9":"tag-andrew-freedman","10":"tag-bad-movie","11":"tag-bear-cub","12":"tag-benevolent-tree","13":"tag-fable","14":"tag-film","15":"tag-god","16":"tag-la","17":"tag-la-headlines","18":"tag-la-news","19":"tag-little-bit","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","22":"tag-los-angeles-news","23":"tag-nathan-engelhardt","24":"tag-retirement","25":"tag-short","26":"tag-spear","27":"tag-story","28":"tag-thing"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/180084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}