In the animated film space, two things naturally come to mind: stories for children and big-budget, formulaic projects. The former idea is something directors have been fighting for years, a recent example being the successful and not-so-child-friendly Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, but the formulaic factor has recently been challenged too — by an uprising in independent animation — and it’s changing the awards landscape.
One of the first films to break through in this way was Flee, a 2021 animated documentary film from Denmark about a gay man looking back on his life as a child refugee from Afghanistan. The film received widespread acclaim for its LGBTQ representation, archival footage and subject matter, leading to many festival awards and three Oscar nominations.
‘Flee’, 2021
Janus Films/Everett Collection
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Competing against three Disney films — Encanto, Luca and Raya and the Last Dragon — and Netflix’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines, Flee was the sole indie nominee in the Animated feature category in 2021. While the NEON-distributed film didn’t win any Academy Awards, Flee was the first film to ever be nominated for Oscars in the Documentary, International and Animated Feature categories.
‘Robot Dreams’, 2023
Neon/Courtesy Everett Collection
Since then, there have been a few independent animated films that have broken through the crowd of big-budget movies. One of the most disruptive was Pablo Berger’s 2023 film Robot Dreams, a dialogue-free story of companionship between a dog and a robot living in Manhattan. The film earned an Oscar nomination before even scheduling a U.S. release date, surprising a lot of people on Oscar nomination morning.
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This year saw the most recent and successful example to date with Oscar-winning animated film Flow. Produced by independent animation company Dream Well Studio, and distributed by Janus Films and Sideshow Pictures, Flow follows a solitary cat that loses its home following a great flood.
When Sideshow partner Jonathan Sehring first saw the animation, he almost couldn’t believe this was an indie film. “I probably watched two or three times just thinking this is a studio movie,” he says. “I couldn’t believe that somebody from Latvia had been able to make this on their own.”
‘Flow’
Janus Films/Courtesy Everett Collection
When Sideshow Pictures launched in 2021, the sole focus for the company was international films, but Sehring says they happened to come to Cannes with an eye out for something new last year. “We thought there might be an opportunity at Cannes to expand beyond our original mandate and see if there were any animated films that might be of interest to us,” he says. “When we saw the material on Flow and watched the movie, we were all kind of stunned at the movie that they were selling. And it seemed to fly a bit under the radar, even though we knew it was going to be a hit.”
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It’s not just notable that Flow won; it’s more notable what it won against. Among the other nominees was DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, which had a successful premiere at TIFF and opened to critical acclaim. Disney-Pixar’s Inside Out 2 was, at the time, the highest-grossing animated film ever, earning over $1.69 billion worldwide on a budget of $200 million. Although both The Wild Robot and Inside Out 2 benefited from a larger budget and bigger studio backing, Flow managed to pull ahead of both films in the Oscar race.
Not only was this director Gints Zilbalodis’ first Oscar nomination and win, but also the first nomination and win for the country of Latvia as well. “This is the first time a film from Latvia has ever been nominated so it truly means a lot for us,” he said in his Oscar acceptance speech. “We are very inspired and we hope to be back soon.”
“I don’t think Gints will be the last [indie animation director] we see win,” says Sehring. “I think the days of [award shows] being dominated by the obvious studios is changing… especially with the Academy changing and more international members, I think it’s a more dramatic change.”
Though his film Memoir of a Snail may have lost, director Adam Elliot says Zilbalodis’ Oscar win is a welcome sign for the future. “It was a great moment for independent animation because it just showed that there’s this whole other body of work out there,” says Elliot. “I was so thrilled that Flow won and Gints, like myself, wants to remain independent. We just want slightly bigger budgets, not for ourselves. We just want to be able to pay our animators and our artists properly.”
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Another indie animation film that made it into the running this year, Memoir of a Snail is a melancholic adult stop-motion animation of a snail hoarding woman named Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook). Produced by Arenamedia and distributed by IFC Films, the film follows the lonely life of Grace from childhood to adulthood, in a story loosely based on Elliot’s life.
Nominations and awards recognition may seem like a pursuit of vanity for some, but Elliot says awards are vital for independent filmmakers. “It’s about validation and visibility, and just showing that we are out there,” he says. “We have been making films for decades, and we need our audiences.”
‘Memoir of a Snail’, 2024
IFC Films/Courtesy Everett Collection
Although Elliot says both his and Zilbalodis’ Oscar campaigns were “run on the smell of an oily rag” compared to the big-studio budgets of the other films, both films managed to earn nominations. “It’s pretty remarkable that both Gints and I even made it to the top five,” he says. “We didn’t have the mega-budgets that Netflix, DreamWorks and Pixar had, yet we gained traction, particularly Flow, in the later months leading up to the ceremony.”
Boasting a nearly 30-year career, Elliot is a director firmly rooted in the independent space. “I’ve been meeting with the studios for 30 years, and they all say how much they love what I do and how they want to work with me… but then they never do,” laughs Elliot. “They would rather I direct one of their IPs or franchises, and I don’t want to do that.”
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As someone who works on stop-motion and animation with adult themes, Elliot’s ideas don’t necessarily fit into that kid-friendly, formulaic structure that most studios are looking for. “I’m certainly not anti-studio,” he says. “I just want to make films my way, with creative control, creative freedom… I want my endings to be how I want them, and I don’t want to have the edges taken off my projects.”
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Elliot has seen a recent change in the landscape for animation. While his job has mostly stayed the same, other than evolving with technology, he has found the industry more receptive than they used to be. “It has been interesting to observe how things have changed in terms of the industry’s attitude toward people like myself and my good friend Gints, who made Flow,” he says. “Because of things like streaming, there’s certainly a greater awareness of adult animation, or animation that is more challenging, so that certainly has made my life easier and hopefully will continue to do so.”
Though he acknowledges there are still many challenges, Elliot says, “I feel that it’s probably never been a better time to be an independent animation director.”
