Academy Reveals 2025 Animation and VFX Oscar Nominees

This morning, the nominations for the 97th Academy Awards were announced in 24 categories at 5:30 a.m. Here are this year’s animation and visual effects nominees:

BEST ANIMATED FEATURE

• Flow (Director: Gints Zilbalodis) Janus Films/Sideshow
• Inside Out 2 (Director: Kelsey Mann) Disney/Pixar
• Memoir of a Snail (Director: Adam Elliot) IFC Films
• Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Directors: Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham) Netflix/ Aardman Animations
• The Wild Robot  (Director: Chris Sanders) Universal/DreamWorks

BEST ANIMATED SHORT

• Beautiful Men (Director: Nicolas Keppens)
• In the Shadow of the Cypress (Directors: Hossein Molayemi, Shirin Sohani)
• Magic Candies (Director: Daisuke Nishio)
• Wander to Wonder (Director: Nina Gantz)
• Yuck! (Director: Loïc Espuche)

BEST VISUAL EFFECTS

• Alien: Romulus. Eric Barba, Nelson Sepulveda-Fauser, Daniel Macarin, Shane Mahan. (20th Century)
• Better Man. Luke Millar, David Clayton, Keith Herft, Peter Stubbs (Paramount)
• Dune, Part Two. Paul Lambert, Stephen James, Rhys Salcombe, Gerd Nefzer (Warner Bros.)
• Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. Erik Winquist, Stephen Unterfranz, Paul Story, Rodney Burke (20th Century)
• Wicked. Pablo Helman, Jonathan Fawkner, David Shirk, Paul Corbould (Universal)

Animation in Other Categories: Flow was also nominated in the International Feature Category, representing Latvia. It is the first time a Latvian movie has been nominated for an Oscar. DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot was also nominated in the Best Music (Kris Bowers) and Best Sound categories, bringing its nomination total to three. The acclaimed Latvian documentary Porcelain Wars, directed by Brendan Bellomo and Slava Leontyev, which features animated segments created by BluBlu Studios in Warsaw, Poland, was one of the five titles nominated in the documentary feature category. You can read our interview with the filmmakers here.

Overview:  Gints Zilbalodis’ dialogue-free feature, Flow, has emerged as the underdog international movie that was able to become a key contender during the award season. The talented writer-director-composer created the animation using the popular open-source tool Blender, stole the spotlight with this charming feature about a brave cat who learns to cooperate with other animals to survival in a water-filled post-apocalyptic world without any humans in sight. The movie earned a 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and also won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature earlier this month. The Academy Award nominees mirror the Golden Globes list, with the exception of Memoir of a Snail, which replaced the Golden Globes’ fifth title, Moana 2.

DreamWorks‘ The Wild Robot has also been a constant favorite with critics and awards groups. Just yesterday, the movie (which has a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes) received a USC Best Scripter Award, which marked only the second time an animated movie has earned this honor. (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio was the first movie to get a Script nomination, which also won the Academy Award two years ago.) Awards watchers have noted that this is one of DreamWorks’ most critically acclaimed movies to date, and should it win the top prize, it would be the second time the studio has landed the gold since Shrek won the Best Animated Feature Oscar in 2001 — the first year the Academy handed out the prize in this category.

Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl is also on a roll: Last week, the movie received three BAFTA nominations in Best Animated Feature, Best Children’s & Families, and Outstanding British Film categories. The movie has a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is certainly quite an achievement for an animated feature: (Only six other movies — Pinocchio, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya have this perfect RT ratings score.)

Let’s not forget that Pixar’s Inside Out was 2024’s biggest movie at the box office, earning over $1.698 billion worldwide. Director Kelsey Mann’s charming sequel, which introduced audiences to several new emotions, also received great reviews.

Adam Elliot’s stop-motion Memoir of a Snail won the Cristal Award for Best Feature Film at Annecy and the Best Film award at the BFI London Film Festival, marking the first time an animated film won the top prize at the festival. The talented Australian director also won the Best Short Oscar in 2004 for his short Harvie Krumpet.

Missing in Action: Disney’s Moana 2 failed to make the cut. This is the third time a Disney Feature Animation title (excluding Pixar movies) was not nominated for a Best Animated Feature Oscar. Among the other top-rated movies that didn’t receive nominations this year were GKIDS’ Chicken for Linda and The Colors Within, Netflix’s The Imaginary, Ultraman: Rising, Spellbound and That Christmas and Paramount’s Transformers One.

In the shorts category, Au Revoir Mon Monde, A Bear Named Wojtek, Bottle George, A Crab in the Pool, Maybe Elephants, Me, Origami, Percebes, The 21, and The Wild-Tempered Clavier were among the acclaimed titles that had won numerous festival awards and made the initial Oscar shortlist, but failed to win a nomination from Academy voters.

Last year, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron won the Best Animated Feature Oscar, while the top prize for Best Animated Short went to War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko (Director: Dave Mullins). The Creator was the winner for Best Visual Effects in 2024.

The 97th edition of the Academy Awards will be held on Sunday, 2, beginning at 7 p.m. (ET) and  4 p.m (PDT) at the Dolby Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center in Hollywood, and will be televised live on the ABC Television Network. Conan O’Brien will host the ceremony.

See oscars.org for the complete list of nominees.