Animated Short Film is a shining category this year with two films I think that are battling it out: Annie and BAFTA winner The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse and Annie winner Ice Merchants. The former has the Apple campaign behind it, and it’s been massive. The latter is the first Portuguese film production to ever be nominated for an Oscar (Portugal holds the record for most International Feature Film/Foreign Language Film submissions without a nomination) and while it doesn’t have the campaign behind it could still be a passion pick. They both won Annie awards, but in different categories. At 32 minutes, The Boy is the longest nominee here, while Ice Merchants at a swift and wordless 14 minutes could be very appealing to voters (in fact, there hasn’t been a winner in this category over 16 minutes since 2007.). An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It could be a secret spoiler though.
Netflix has won the Documentary Short Film category twice, most recently with 2017’s The White Elements, and has two contenders here: The Elephant Whisperers and The Martha Mitchell Effect. While I’m going with Stranger at the Gate from executive producer Malala Yousafzai, there is definitely a spoiler in Elephant‘s My Octopus Teacher-like animal doc.
Live Action Short feels like a two-film race between the high profile of Le Pupille (from Alice Rohrwacher and multi-Oscar winner Alfonso Cuarón) and An Irish Goodbye, a recent BAFTA winner and part of the Irish wave that swept the Oscar nominations this year with The Banshees of Inisherin and The Quiet Girl. I’m leaning to Le Pupille, which has been streaming on Disney+ for a bit and that name recognition. It would be Cuarón’s fifth Oscar win in his fourth category (he previously won Best Director and Best Film Editing for 2013’s Gravity and Best Director and Best Cinematography for 2018’s Roma).
Here are my final 2023 Oscar winner predictions for Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Film and Live Action Short Film.
| 1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Apple Original Films) – Annie, BAFTA Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud |
| 2. Ice Merchants (Curtas Metragens CRL / Agência – Portuguese Short Film Agency / New Yorker Studios) – Annie João Gonzalez and Bruno Caetano |
| 3. An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It (Griffith Film School) Lachlan Pendragon |
| 4. My Year of Dicks (The Animation Showcase / Cat’s Pajamas) Sara Gunnarsdóttir and Pamela Ribon |
| 5. The Flying Sailor (National Film Board of Canada / New Yorker Studios) Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby |
| 1. Stranger at the Gate (New Yorker Studios) Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones |
| 2. The Elephant Whisperers (Netflix) Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga |
| 3. The Martha Mitchell Effect (Netflix) Anne Alvergue and Beth Levison |
| 4. How Do You Measure a Year? (Jay Rosenblatt Films) Jay Rosenblatt |
| 5. Haulout (Albireo Films) Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev |
| 1. Le Pupille (Disney+) Alice Rohrwacher and Alfonso Cuarón |
| 2. An Irish Goodbye (Floodlight Pictures) – BAFTA Tom Berkeley and Ross White |
| 3. Ivalu (M&M Productions) Anders Walter and Rebecca Pruzan |
| 4. Night Ride (Cylinder Productions) Eirik Tveiten and Gaute Lid Larssen |
| 5. The Red Suitcase (Cynefilms) Cyrus Neshvad |
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