Two decades ago, in 2006, the team at ShortsTV transformed one of the key Oscar races, securing the rights to release all five finalists in the Academy Awards’ animated short category on the big screen and pretty much all devices, from laptops to cell phones. Ergo, the “2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Animation” package now in theaters represents the company’s 20th edition. In that time, Carter Pilcher and his crew have enabled the theatrical release of a whopping 99 animated finalists (securing the rights to all but Shane Acker’s “9” in their first year). This year’s program is fairly unique in that there are no glossy, Hollywood-made contenders in the mix, which makes for a broad-ranging survey of what independent artists are doing with the medium at the moment.
The closest thing to a studio-backed submission is director Daisuke Nishio’s “Magic Candies,” made for Toei Animation (the company behind the popular “One Piece” and “Dragon Ball” franchises), though there’s no mistaking the personal touch. Designed and lit to look like stop motion, but actually made using CGI, the 21-minute short focuses on a solitary kid named Dong-Dong. After buying a bag of brightly colored sweets, the boy discovers that each of the candies allows him a new way to communicate with someone different in his life — the worn-out couch in his apartment, Dong-Dong’s misunderstood dog Gusuri, his stressed-out single dad — but only as long as the sugar treat lasts in his mouth. Told with humor and a hefty measure of well-earned sentimentality, the short has a tendency to spell out what’s happening on screen, though that should make it all the more effective for the young audiences Nishio is trying to reach (while the nomination allows it to cross borders and touch Americans old enough to read subtitles).
Next up, Iranian co-directors Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi’s visually striking 2D short “In the Shadow of the Cypress” takes a tricky adult subject — the impact of PTSD — and tries to communicate how it works to audiences of all ages. A young woman lives by the sea with her war-scarred father, who finds it difficult to engage with present-day problems — such as the whale that washes ashore — since he’s still haunted by violent visions from the past. Like its poetic English-language title, the allegorical tale can be a little confusing to interpret at times, but looks striking in its line-free illustrative style. The two characters are shaped like tall candles, with long, slender arms and simplified facial expressions. Because they don’t talk, it’s up to us to decipher how a bombed-out boat signifies the older man’s worst memories from the war and what he must do to free himself of that trauma.
By contrast, French director Loïc Espuche’s “Yuck!” could hardly be more clear — or original — in the way it communicates a universally recognizable idea: Until a certain age, kids can hardly stand to watch grown-ups kiss. The delightful, shame-shattering vignette takes place at a summer camp, where Léo and his friends are surrounded by amorous-minded adults, whom they observe like the amateur anthropologists that they are, giggling from behind bushes as the impulse to smooch makes others’ lips glow bright pink. That simple idea, of representing the once-incomprehensible desire to lock lips in such intuitive visual terms, is perfectly suited to the medium of animation (and doubles as a metaphor for other, less G-rated forms of lovemaking). While Léo and his pals nervously poke fun at the snogging all around them, the boy has trouble reconciling his feelings for a girl named Lucie, who makes his own lips light up like a neon flamingo. You can guess where this is going, and yet, Espuche packs so many smiles and surprises into 13 minutes, it’ll have your eyeballs sparkling pink with pleasure.
The last two shorts come with a “parental guidance” warning, since a couple of their stop-motion characters appear without pants … although it sees unusually cautious to shelter young viewers from something as innocuous as puppet “nudity”? That said, Nina Gantz’s 14-minute “Wander to Wonder” offers such a twisted take on vintage TV shows like “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and “Captain Kangaroo” that there’s a case to be made for sparing kids the sight of three orphaned mascots (the six-inch actors who played Bigfoot family Mary, Billybud and Fumbleton on the eponymous TV program) going all “Lord of the Flies” after the show’s human host kicks the bucket. Gantz goes impressively dark with her concept, which pushes the absurdity seen in last year’s “Sasquatch Sunset” to Brechtian extremes (reflected in retro touches like color bleed and interference lines applied to certain “videotaped” sequences). In her imagination, the cast members really are as tiny as they appear on TV, which makes it frightening to think how they will survive as food runs out and vermin start to invade the studio — an idea so demented (yet hip), you wish the Academy had seen the genius in Robin Comisar’s “Great Choice” seven years earlier.
Nicolas Keppens brings a more grounded but still surreal touch to his ethereal stop-motion “Beautiful Men,” which takes tonal cues from misty Dutch masters, Edward Hopper (with its lonely figures in empty rooms) and “Anomalisa.” The 19-minute short poignantly observes three Belgian brothers, who once had long, vibrant red hair. Now in middle age, they are all balding, so the trio travels to Istanbul for hair transplants — except, they mistakenly made just one reservation. How to decide which of these pathetic characters will get his fading masculinity restored? Set during the pandemic, with characters wearing facemasks and doing their best to social distance, the film has a peculiar, alienating feel that underscores each of the men’s eroding sense of self. Keppens typically works in a “King of the Hill”-like hand-drawn style, but his decision to work with three-dimensional figures on this project takes things to a more soulful place. All told, this year’s 90-minute collection makes for quite the emotional journey.