How The 2025 Oscars Made Animation History

The Oscars (and awards ceremonies in general) have a big animation problem. For much of Oscars history animated films have been shut out of nominations, with only animated short films having their own category. Then, once the Best Animated Feature category was created in 2001, it quickly came to be dominated by Disney films’ and kids films in general. The Academy didn’t take long to essentially consider the entire medium to be nothing more than a yearly celebration of Disney’s marketing prowess, and the butt of endless dumb jokes about how tiring it is to watch a cartoon with your kids.

Granted, there have been surprises, like “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” going home with the win back in 2022, or when Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” won last year. Still, the award has historically been rather predictable: a simple battle between the big American studios, and an award given simply to the highest-grossing animated movie that year.

Thankfully, the 2025 Oscars seem to be doing something right — despite many mistakes. The Academy came to its senses this year and realized that animated films are also films, and that they are worthy of consideration in multiple categories, as they have different production departments that excel at what they do — just like live-action movies.

It’s a small gesture, of course, and not at all a sign that the ceremony will be different in years to come. But at least for this year, it is a refreshing change.

It’s been over 20 years since the Academy introduced the Best Animated Feature category, but the medium is still an afterthought that is not given the same consideration as live-action movies. Just as any live-action film can be nominated for the many technical categories in addition to Best Picture, so are animated movies the result of many different departments doing equally arduous and impressive work. Take “Memoir of a Snail.” As a stop-motion film, it uses effectively live-action sets, with costumes, set decoration, and lighting just like a live-action production. “Ultraman: Rising” director Shannon Tindle recently took Variety to task for not including animation directors in their roundtables, and he has a point. Animation directors are still directors, so why are they not considered as such for awards season?

Thankfully, 2025 is changing things a bit. “Flow,” one of the best movies of the year and one hell of a great disaster film, got not only a Best Animated Feature nomination, but also a Best International Film nod as the film is primarily a Latvian production. Meanwhile, DreamWorks’ “The Wild Robot” got a nod for “Best Original Score” and even a nomination for Best Sound. This last one is significant because, along with Best Original Score and Best Original Song, animated films have managed to earn Best Sound nods decades before they got their own category, with “Bambi” getting a nomination back in 1942.

In a better timeline, we would have animated films competing in every category alongside live-action films. Take the visual effects category. How come only three animated films have earned nods in that category, considering how VFX-heavy films like “Across the Spider-Verse” are? Many Pixar movies have been nominated for Best Original Screenplay, but why not director?

One of the most curious developments of the last couple of years when it comes to the Oscars has been the decline of Disney movies getting nominations. This is the fourth year in a row where no Disney animated movie has received a Best Animated Feature nomination (granted, Pixar movies still get nominated, but that’s technically a separate studio). This has allowed smaller films to earn nominations and get the spotlight.

This year we have not one but two of the nominees coming from small distributors with no real Oscar campaign history. “Flow” (distributed by Janus Films) and “Memoir of a Snail” (IFC Films) have neither the manpower nor the budget of a big studio like Pixar or DreamWorks, or even the resources and proven track record of a company like GKIDS or Neon. Nevertheless, both films managed to get Oscar nominations, which is a tremendous achievement. Things are far from great when it comes to animation and the Oscars, but this is arguably the most varied list of nominees for animation in years.