2021 Oscar Predictions: ANIMATED FEATURE (January)

It was off my radar for far too long but No. 7 Cherry Lane from director Yonfan (Prince of Tears, Color Blossoms) makes a big debut this month, in the top 5. The film won the screenplay prize at the 2019 Venice International Film Festival.

No.7 Cherry Lane is a 125-minute, hand-drawn 2D animation feature set in Hong Kong’s “Little Shanghai” neighborhood of North Point during the turbulent anti-colonial riots of the 1960s. Using pencil on rice paper and colored to the most imaginative tones, scores of animators had to render all the caricatures in 3D before hand-drawing them in 2D.

Lupin III: The First, which was a surprise winner from the Hawaii Film Critics Society, moves up into the top 10.

Here are my ranked 2021 Oscar predictions in Animated Feature for January.

1. Soul (Disney/Pixar)
Pete Docter, Dana Murray

2. Wolfwalkers (Apple TV+/Cartoon Saloon/GKIDS)
Stéphan Roelants, Tomm Moore, Ross Stewart, Paul Young, Nora Twomey

3. Over the Moon (Netflix)
Glen Keane, Peilin Chou, Gennie Rim

4. Onward (Pixar)
Dan Scanlon, Kori Rae

5. No. 7 Cherry Lane (Far Sun Films)
Yonfan, Monica Chau

6. Earwig and the Witch (Studio Ghibli)
Gorô Miyazaki

7. Trolls: World Tour (Universal Pictures)
Walt Dohm and Gina Shay

8. The Croods: A New Age (Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Animation)
Mark Swift, Joel Crawford

9. Lupin III: The First (GKIDS)
Takashi Yamazaki, Takeshi Ito, Naoaki Kitajima, Koji Nozaki

10. Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train (Funimation)
Haruo Sotozaki

Other Contenders (alphabetical by film)

Bombay Rose (Netflix)
Gitanjali Rao

Brightheart (TriCoast Worldwide)
Weifeng Deng, Astrid Wang, Yunfei Wang, Brett Zharig

On-Gaku: Our Sound (GKIDS)
Kenji Iwaisawa

Ride Your Wave (GKIDS)
Masaaki Yuasa

Rumble (Paramount Pictures)
Hamish Grieve, Mark Bakshi, Brad Booker

Scoob! (Warner Bros)
Tony Cervone, Pam Coats, Allison Abbate

A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon (Netflix)
Richard Phelan, Will Becher

A Whisker Away (Netflix)
Satô Jun’ichi, Shibayama Tomotaka

Wish Dragon (Sony Pictures)
Chris Appelhans, Chris Bremble, Aron Warner, Jackie Chan, Qi Jianhong

Image courtesy of the Venice International Film Festival

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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