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Updated: Jan. 17, 2025

Trying to figure out what will get nominated in the three short-film categories at the Oscars is one of the hardest things to forecast. Fear not, we are here to help! Below are all 15 films that made the Academy Awards shortlist for Best Animated Short along with descriptions and embedded videos and/or links where available.

Some of the subjects covered by this year’s batch of cartoon shorts are a group of bald brothers confronting their flaws while all seeking hair transplants, a troubled captain attempting to raise his daughter, the brutality of Isis on Coptic men in Africa, and a young boy curious about kissing.

Here is your 2025 Oscars Best Animated Short cheat sheet, ranked based on Gold Derby’s current combined odds:

“Beautiful Men” – 4/1 odds

While staying at a hotel in Istanbul while they all await hair transplants, three bald brothers struggle with their self-confidence.

Sometimes, under pressure, the need to create is so strong that one uses whatever comes to hand. In times of chaos, when direction is uncertain, the act of creation can begin before one knows what the subject will be. Both these things apply to Anna Samo’s experimental short, now on the 2025 Oscar Shortlist, which explores the act of animation and artistry as a form of resistance.

The project begins with a traditional editing set-up of the sort used by animators – primarily in the past – to paint directly onto film stock, frame by frame. The difference here is that the set-up has been assembled from everyday objects of the sort an artist might found lying around on her desk, and instead of reels of film, it uses rolls of toilet paper. Samo daubs these with ink, at first uncertainly, but with a theme gradually emerging. A pianist is...

It's always hard to take rejection. No matter how successful you are, no matter how many times you've been rejected, it still stings. Conversations With a Whale is a stop-motion animated short film made by Anna Samo (now known as Anne Bergmann) - it's a self-referential meta story about an artist's demons dealing with rejection, including printed out versions of her own rejection letters from film festivals. In this love letter to artists, their art, and its audience, a filmmaker's constant rejections surprisingly bear fruit. "Anna Samo, or her animated alter ego in Conversations With A Whale, has a charming appearance that evokes memories of 'The Little Prince': the crown, the cape, essential questions surrounding one's own existence and a wee plant that is taken care of with lots of love are there." This is beautifully animated and uplifting, putting a positive spin on bad news. I was expecting more voiceover,...

With their awards-contending animated short The Opposites Game, filmmakers Lisa Labracio and Anna Samo faced the challenge of bringing a compelling visual representation to a brief yet powerful poem by Brendan Constantine—a poem they considered perfect.

Packing an array of sumptuous and imaginative stop-motion imagery into a little less than 5 minutes, the piece watches as a war of words erupts in a classroom, when a teacher invites his students to answer a deceptively simple prompt: “What is the opposite of a gun?”

The Opposites Game is the first short in a series called “There’s a Poem for That” from Ted-Ed, Ted’s youth and education initiative. Comprising a global network of over 250,000 teachers, Ted-Ed’s aim is to “spark and celebrate the ideas of teachers and students around the world,” currently publishing around 150 pieces of animation a year with this mission in mind.

“There’s a Poem for...