Our coverage of Best Animated Short has been a little slight this season, but that doesn’t mean that there are colorful, worthy contenders. In today’s post we will look at three films that could very well find themselves on Thursday’s shortlist. All three have either a magical creature or just an affinity for our friends that fly in the sky.
The Smeds and The Smoos
Magic Light Pictures is a good friend to the Academy Awards, but the studio has, strangely, never won an Oscar in this category. The Gruffalo was their last entry in this category. The Smeds and The Smoos is a classic tale of how you should love your neighbor and learning that your biases–especially when you don’t know why they were there in the first place.
The Smeds (these little red folks with trumpet noses) haven’t gotten along with their squat-nosed neighbors (the blue Smoos, naturally) for as long as they can remember. Grandmother Smoo and Grandfather Smed have dispelled these strict yet simple rules ever since Judy and Bill can remember. When Janet wanders off into the woods and discovers Bill has the same idea, a friendship and romance blooms away from their respective families. When the families discover that their kin have blasted off to another planet, they join forces to find them.
When Grandmother and Grandfather venture out with their families, they visit other planets with fantastical elements. One is covered in slime another with blooming flowers. One’s residents event traipse around on stilts. Narrated by the gentle guidance of Oscar-nominee Sally Hawkins The Smeds and The Smoos is a familiar story but a delightful one.
Starling
A pair of grieving parents light a candle on their daughter’s birthday cake, but the chair is empty. They huddle together and they unknowingly wish upon a star, but what they don’t realize is that the star got the message and she’s coming home! Mitra Shahidi’s Starling will shoot straight to your gut. It’s a jolly, emotional animated short that will take you by surprise.
When the starling hurtles down to earth, she causes a bit of mischief. She tumbles through a market, sneaks some snacks, and even hops on a trolley as she hurtles towards her parents’ home. Her cherubic face could be slapped on stuffed animals around the world, and I’m sure people would snag them up. Shahidi mixes a jaunty adventure with emotive characters in a balanced and nuanced way.
I love the roundness of the characters’ face and the hustle and bustle of the crowd scenes is layered and fun to pass through. Also, the parents’ building is slightly higher than the buildings around them, and the large, lit up window feels like it’s calling her home.
Do we ever truly lose the ones we love? Starling suggests that while we miss them and we can no longer see them, their spirit lives on in a magical and, sometimes, rascally way. It’s comforting, warm, and just playful. Shahidi’s film won Best Animated Short at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
The Day I Became a Bird
Do you remember the first person you actually had feelings for? Maybe not the first person you date in school, but the first person you felt different about? The Day I Became a Bird lovingly colors in the lines of feeling those first pangs of love and just how far you would go to get noticed. I adore this short so much.
A young boy notices that a girl in his class has an affinity for birds. She draws them during class and spends recess with her binoculars spying on her favorite feathered friends. The more this boy becomes infatuated with her, the harder he tried to get her to look down at him. He typically gazes at her from afar, and director Andrew Ruheman mostly shows us her back for the first half of his film.
I won’t reveal what this boy does in order to nab her attention, but Ruheman incorporates a lot of swift comedy into his tender tale. The animators make their heads slightly big and their squiggly-drawn rosy cheeks give us a storybook quality. I personally love when animated shorts don’t shy away from the “drawn” aspect of the visual language.
You never forget the first person you fall for but with birds in the equation, The Day I Became a Bird really takes flight.