The themes addressed by the short animated films qualifying for the 2027 Oscar race are expanding, moving beyond fictional and entertaining stories to recall the memory of wars and violence, discuss identity and belonging, and document family and human relationships, in experiments that use various animation techniques to present personal and social issues in a visual language.
Memory of Wars and Its Effects
Several films recall painful historical experiences through individual stories, including the Canadian film "Paradise" by director Matija Radic, which returns to the city of Sarajevo, which she left as a child during the war in the 1990s, and won the Golden Dove Award for Short Films in the International Animated Film Competition at the Leipzig Festival in 2025. The South African-American film "Apar" by director Paula Manelli, on the other hand, deals with the apartheid era in South Africa through a friendship between two children, and won the Best Presentation award at the SIGGRAPH Festival in 2026.
In the same context, the Canadian film "What We Leave Behind" by directors Alexandra Miot and Jean-Sebastien Hamel takes memory as a more private path, following a man who returns to the hockey rink associated with his childhood, and won the Best International Short Film award at the Kaboom Animation Festival in 2026.
Identity and Belonging
The issue of identity is present in the French film "Slimani" by director Vinnie Anne Boss, which brings together two young women from the Indian state of Kerala in an Indian restaurant in Paris, and won two awards for Best Short Film at the Manchester Animation Festival in 2025 and the Animation Jury Award at the Aspen Short Film Festival in 2026.
For its part, the Colombian film "Once Upon a Body" by director Maria Cristina Perez Gonzalez explores reconciliation with her sister regarding an incident dating back to her teenage years, while past experiences are embodied by a strange creature living in her body, a visual metaphor for the relationship between the body, memory, and identity.
Human Connections
Family relationships and loss take center stage in the American film "Saba" by director Liron Topaz, which portrays the relationship between a boy and his grandfather in a fictional world, drawing on the director's personal experience with his grandfather. In a different direction, the Czech film "Nine Million Colors" by director Para Anna Stistkalova presents a story of friendship between a praying mantis shrimp and a blind fish, and won the Grand Prize for Animation at the Indie Shorts Festival in 2026.
These works are still in the qualification stage for the Oscar race, as the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that the shortlist for the 99th edition will be released on December 15, 2026, with the final nominations to be announced on January 21, 2027, before the awards ceremony scheduled for March 14 of the same year.
Source: Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA)
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