All the 2026 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts Reviewed: Cute Bears, Love Quadrangles and Nazi Atrocities

Every year the Academy Awards gives out Oscars to short filmmakers, and every year a lot of people in the audience scratch their heads, because they’ve never seen or heard of most of the nominees. Fortunately, Roadside Attractions is releasing all 15 nominees in theaters this weekend, with each category presented as a separate, feature-length showcase.

These shows are usually a must-see event for movie-lovers and especially Oscar fans, and this year is no exception. The Academy Award-nominated animated shorts are an impressive collection of stylistically and thematically distinct works of art, some funny, some haunting, all of them genuinely good.

The nominated shorts were, of course, not originally intended to be viewed together. They are individual works of art that are only on the same program because of their Oscar nominations, which sometimes leads to unexpected shifts in tone. But even so, I think you’ll enjoy these inspired and gorgeous films.

Here, I review all six of the films nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film: “The Three Sisters,” “Forevergreen,” “The Girl Who Cried Pearls,” “Butterfly” (aka “Papillon”) and “Retirement Plan.”

And don’t miss my reviews of all the Oscar-nominated live-action short films and documentary short films.

‘The Three Sisters’

Konstantin Bronzit’s charming romantic quadrangle tells the story of three sisters who live alone, on a tiny island, in three tiny houses. When their savings accidentally fall into the ocean, they’re forced to rent a house to a burly fisherman. Before long, they fall over themselves for his affections, primping and preening and doing his chores. This tale could lead to tragedy, but Bronzit has a lot of affection for these characters and provides a convenient solution to their problems.

Again, it’s a trap to compare these short films to each other, since they were never intended to be compared, or even appear on the same program, but “The Three Sisters” is certainly the breeziest of these animated short nominees. It’s skillfully crafted and genuinely whimsical, it just doesn’t amount to much.

The biggest drama was actually behind the scenes: Three-time Oscar nominee Konstantin Bronzit (“Lavatory Lovestory,” “We Can’t Live Without Cosmos”) directed “The Three Sisters” under an alias as an experiment, to see if his work could be appreciated if it came from a complete unknown. That experiment was a success, and his identity was revealed shortly after the latest Academy Awards nominations were announced.

‘Forevergreen’

The most family-friendly nominee — even though it’s going to make families cry their eyes out — is a dialogue-free short about an anthropomorphic pine tree who adopts an orphaned bear cub. All goes well until the bear discovers the joys of human garbage and runs off in search of forbidden delights, and gets himself in big, big trouble.

“Forevergreen” is a storybook come to life, even though it’s a rather familiar story. It plays like a more energetic, and even more emotionally-manipulative version of Shel Silverstein’s “The Giving Tree.” That it ends with a biblical quote — I’d say which one, but it’s a spoiler — only cements the film’s identity as a blunt morality tale.

The only problem with that is the stated moral might not be the healthiest takeaway from the picture. Still, unlike some other heart-tugging Oscar-nominated animated shorts from recent years (I’m looking at you, “War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”), “Forevergreen” never overplays its hand, and it always feels sincere. Directors Jeremy Spears and Nathan Engelhardt graduated from Disney’s animation department, with credits on hit films like “Zootopia” and “Encanto,” and their first short together is just as accomplished, just as polished, and possibly more stylistically stunning than those earlier projects.

‘The Girl Who Cried Pearls’

Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s stop-motion animated wonder is about, as you probably assumed, a girl who cried pearls. An old man tells his granddaughter a story about his most valuable possession, a single pearl, which begins when he was a homeless boy in Montreal, sneaking into an abandoned apartment and spying on an abusive family next door. The young tormented girl cries herself to sleep, but her tears transform into pearls, and soon — even though he loves her — he’s tempted to exploit her misery and sell her baubles to a greedy local pawnbroker.

“The Girl Who Cried Pearls” is an impressive technical accomplishment, flashing back from slick opulence into a miserable, bedraggled past, where the figures and environments all look the creations of a very depressive mind. The tale itself is clever, even challenging, and concludes with an important question. The answer might be important, but what matters most, one suspects, is that it had to be asked.

‘Butterfly’ (aka ‘Papillon’)

This hand-painted marvel, directed by Florence Miailhe, tells the story of real-life Olympic swimmer Alfred Nakache, a Jewish, French Algerian athlete who competed at the 1936 summer games in Nazi Germany. (Worth noting: Just before this film plays in the program, there’s a title card saying the rest of these movies may be upsetting for young audiences.)

If you know anything about Nakache, you know he suffered during the Holocaust. If you know nothing about him, “Butterfly” will teach you with sensitivity, grace, and a direct approach to the evils of the Nazi regime. That many scenes closely resemble current American politics, including public outcries to ban certain groups from professional sports, is to our collective shame. This a powerful short, realized through vivid oil and pastel paintings on glass, and it’s unlike any of the other nominees in this category. Then again all the nominees are incredibly different works of art. And again, they’re all excellent.

‘Retirement Plan’

The final nominated film, “Retirement Plan,” is a short, poetic monologue read by Domhnall Gleeson. He plays a young, or middle-aged man with a list of everything he wants to do when he retires, like learning a new language, learning how to play piano, going to a museum and actually wanting to be there, how to cook a leek and — as a side note — finding out what a leek is.

At a tidy seven minutes, the plotless “Retirement Plan” may look simplistic, but there’s real depth in John Kelly’s dry, thoughtful short. It’s cute that the narrator wants to do so very, very much after he retires. It’s tragic that, by definition, this means he isn’t living now, and for all we know may not live long enough to check any of these simple yet meaningful life experiences of his “to do” list. It’s a pensive, subtly melancholic way to end the program.

Except… it’s not the end of the program.

Bonus Short: ‘Éiru’

The Oscar-nominated animated shorts are usually pretty… short, so the programmers typically pad the run time by including other, recent animated shorts that didn’t quite make the cut. This year the animated shorts are slightly longer than usual so there’s only one bonus, but it’s worth sticking around for. (Although if you took your kids home just before “Butterfly” — which, again, the program says you might want to do — they’d miss out on one more film everyone could enjoy.)

“Éiru” comes from Cartoon Saloon, the Irish animation company behind classics like “The Secret of Kells” and “The Breadwinner,” and like all Cartoon Saloon features, the animation is sharply-angled, vibrantly colorful, and incredibly imaginative. First-time writer/director Giovanna Ferrari tells a story about a young viking girl named Éiru who wants to be a warrior, but she’s too small to go into battle. When the town well dries up, she’s the only viking tiny enough to climb down and investigate, where she uncovers something beautiful about the world and something horrible about humanity.

It’s a wonderful fable and a fine addition to the Oscar-nominated shorts program. Had it been nominated I think it could have been a contender. But alone amongst the nominees it plays like the pilot episode for a TV series. There’s so much more story to tell after the credits roll that the short feels a little less final, and doesn’t pack quite the same punch as the five films that preceded it. Indeed, saving it for the end is a little anticlimactic, but that’s a programming problem, and has nothing to do with the quality of this film. Which, again, is fantastic.

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