Flow and 4 Other Recent Movies That Have Won an Oscar for Best Animation
Works from Disney and Pixar, as well as completely unexpected winners of the top film prize.
The award for best animated film was added to the Oscars relatively recently, in 2002. Before that, animated films could either compete with live-action movies in the main categories or receive special awards.
The winner this year was Flow, which we will talk about first.
1. Flow, 2024
A nameless cat lives in an area where there are no people, but there are many statues of his kind. Suddenly, the water begins to rise. On the verge of drowning, the cat jumps into a boat where a capybara is already sitting.
Gradually, a whole team gathers on board: they are joined by a dog, a lemur and a bird. All the animals want to swim to a place where the water may not reach.
Flow is one of the most amazing Oscar winners. It is a small original work by animator Gints Zilbalodis, which does not even have dialog.
2. The Boy and The Heron, 2023
Mahito's mother dies in the bombing. The boy moves in with his father, but he cannot get used to the new school and does not know how to behave with his stepmother Natsuko.
Soon he meets a strange heron. It claims that Mahito's mother is still alive and that she can be reached through the tower that the boy's ancestor built.
In 2013, Hayao Miyazaki released The Wind Rises, which was considered the last in the career of the great animator. But ten years later, he returned with a new work that rethinks both the biography of the author himself and his creative legacy.
3. Soul, 2020
Music teacher Joe has dreamed of performing on the big stage for years. He finally gets the chance to join the band, but an accident causes his soul to separate from his body. Now Joe must find a way to get back.
Pete Docter, who directed the Oscar-winning animated films Inside Out and Up, hasn't directed since 2015. But he returned to work, directing Soul, which was billed as a return to classic Pixar style.
4. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, 2018
Miles Morales lives in a world where everyone adores Peter Parker, known as Spider-Man. But after the superhero's death, it's the teenager who must become the city's new protector.
Versions of Spider-Man from different worlds will help him fight evil. And sometimes these versions are very strange.
A bright superhero story from Sony Pictures became the first animated film since 2011 to break Disney and Pixar's monopoly on the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. And Spider-Man's victory is well-deserved: the studio introduced an entirely new technology that brings comic books to life on screen.
5. Coco, 2017
Miguel dreams of becoming a musician, but in his family this profession is considered shameful. One day, the boy discovers a mysterious connection to a deceased famous singer and travels to the land of the dead to meet his idol.
To tell the story of the land of the dead, Pixar animators had to go to great lengths. The skeletons in the movie are slightly different from real ones to make them look more alive and attractive.
The authors also completely reworked the program for creating clothes, because on bones the fabric looks completely different than on a normal human body.