Short Film: The List of Qualified Films

96 short films are on the longlist of Oscar Festival list.

A short can become eligible for an Oscar in one of three ways. It has to be publicly exhibited in a theater in L.A. or New York City under certain conditions, or take home an award at a designated “qualifying” festival (see the list here), or win at the Student Academy Awards. The filmmakers must then submit it to the Academy. The pandemic played havoc with the festival circuit, postponing some events and cancelling others, but this doesn’t seem to have had a significant impact on the qualifications — record or not, 96 is a high number.

Shorts are where some of the most beautiful, innovative, and distinctive animation can be found. Yet many remain inaccessible to the general public while on their festival run (even if the rise of virtual festivals last year changed that somewhat).

This Oscar category doesn’t enjoy much visibility — year after year, few outside (or even in) the industry have a clear idea of what’s in the running. We hope to draw attention to the sheer diversity of animated short filmmaking, and to spark debate among the animation community, and hopefully beyond, about the films that should be considered for an Oscar.

For the list of the shorts, please see the links here:

https://www.oscars.org/sites/oscars/files/93aa_short_festivals.pdf