No 2020 Oscar category can boast a higher level of quality — or diversity, for that matter — than the animated shorts, and though the five nominees are among the least-seen , film buffs would do well to track them down all the same. This also happens to be the category that scales best to smaller screens, and which can be watched in increments ranging from seven to 15 minutes apiece, so do yourself a favor and seek them out.
Up-and-coming Czech animator Daria Kashcheeva also focuses on the bond between a young girl and her father in “,” a film school thesis project that just added Sundance’s animation jury prize to its already impressive list of awards. Like “Hair Love,” it concerns a hospital visit, though Kashcheeva’s film is considerably more melancholy in tone, opening with the title character at what could be her dad’s death bed.
French stop-motion entry “Mémorable” deals with an elderly artist coping with Alzheimer’s, a favorite subject among animators, who have invented creative solutions to depict the unreliable subjectivity in such memory-loss shorts as “Late Afternoon” and “The Head Vanishes.” Director Bruno Collet has designed his main character to resemble one of Vincent van Gogh’s self-portraits, the foam-latex skin modeled to look like thick swirls of colored paint.