Animated Shorts Compete for Oscar Eligibility at ATLFF
At the 2015 Oscars, two ATLFF official selections competed for the Best Animated Short award. As an Academy Award®-qualifying festival, will our winning film from this year go on to receive a nomination?
Academy Award® nominated film and ATLFF '14 official selection "The Dam Keeper"
In 2015, the Atlanta Film Festival became Oscar-eligible for the Documentary Short Film category, meaning that the jury award-winning film in that category would then qualify for the shortlist of films that the final nominees are chosen from. However, ATLFF has already been Oscar-qualifying in the animated and narrative short categories for many years.
Earlier this year, two ATLFF official selections were nominated in the Best Animated Short category at the Academy Awards®. "The Dam Keeper," by Robert Kondo and Daisuke 'Dice' Tsutsumi, was part of the animated short competition during the 2014 festival and "The Bigger Picture," by Daisy Jacobs, played this spring as part of the 2015 ATLFF animated short competition.
The winning animated short film from ATLFF '15, thus qualifying it for Academy Award® consideration, is the locally produced "Starlight" from the Atlanta-based filmmakers and animators Tamarind King, Shir Wen Sun, Marisa Tontaveetong and Yu Ueda. "Starlight" follows a stray cat as it navigates the sights and sounds of Atlanta's famed Starlight Six Drive-in Theatre during a busy night. One of the animators, Marisa "Ginger" Tontaveetong, was announced as one of ATLFF's Filmmakers-in-Residence earlier this year. We will have to wait and see if "Starlight" goes on to compete for an Oscar next winter, but we know we have our fingers crossed!
We are now accepting submissions for the Animated Short category and all other categories for the 2016 Atlanta Film Festival. The Regular Deadline is September 18.