How Oscar 2025 entered the history of animation

The Oscars (and ceremonies in general) have a huge animation problem. For most of the history of the Academy Awards, animated films were excluded from the nominations, with only animated shorts having their own category. Then, when the Best Animated Feature category was created in 2001, it quickly became dominated by Disney films and children’s films in general. It didn’t take long for the Academy to essentially consider the entire medium to be nothing more than an annual celebration of Disney’s marketing prowess and an example endless dumb jokes about how boring it is to watch cartoons with kids.

Of course, there have been surprises, like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio coming home victorious in 2022, or when Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron won last year. However, the award has historically been fairly predictable: a straightforward battle between the major American studios and an award given simply to the highest-grossing animated film of that year.

Fortunately, the 2025 Oscars seem to be doing something right — despite many mistakes. This year, the Academy came to its senses and realized that animated films are still films, and that they deserve consideration in multiple categories because they have different production departments that are great at what they do – just like live-action films .

Of course, this is a small gesture, and by no means a sign that the ceremony will be different in years to come. But at least this year it’s a refreshing change.

It’s been more than 20 years since the Academy introduced the Best Animated Feature category, but environment is still an afterthought it doesn’t get the same attention as live action. Just as any live-action film can be nominated in many technical categories in addition to Best Picture, animated films are the result of multiple departments doing equally difficult and impressive work. Take Memoirs of a Snail. As a stop-motion film, it makes effective use of live-action sets with costumes, decorations and lighting just like live action. Director of Ultraman: Rising. Shannon Tindle recently accused Variety of not including animation directors in its roundtables, and he’s right. Animation directors are still directors, so why aren’t they seen as such come awards season?

Fortunately, 2025 will change things a bit. Flow, one of the best movies of the year and damn it a great disaster moviereceived not only a nomination for “Best Animated Film” but also an award for “Best International Film” because the film is mainly Latvian. Meanwhile, DreamWorks’ Wild Robot earned a nod for Best Original Score and even a nomination for Best Sound. That last one is important because, along with Best Original Score and Best Original Song, animated films managed to earn Best Sound nominations decades before they got their own category, with Bambi being nominated as far back as 1942 year.

On a better scale, we would have animated films competing in all categories alongside live action films. Take the visual effects category. Why are only three animated films worthy of a nod in this category, given how VFX-heavy films like Through the Webs are? Many Pixar films have been nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but why not director?

One of the most interesting developments in the past couple of years when it comes to the Academy Awards has been the decline in nominations for Disney films. This is happening for the fourth year in a row no Disney cartoon has ever been nominated for Best Animated Feature. (of course, Pixar films are still nominated, but they’re technically a separate studio). This allowed smaller films to receive nominations and gain the limelight.

This year, we have not one, but two nominees from smaller distributors with no Oscar campaign history. Flow (distributed by Janus Films) and Memoirs of a Snail (IFC Films) don’t have the manpower or budget of big studios like Pixar or DreamWorks, or even the resources and proven track records of companies like GKIDS or Neon. Nevertheless, both films managed to receive Oscar nominations, which is a huge achievement. Things are far from good when it comes to animation and the Oscars, but this is perhaps the most diverse list of animation nominees in years.