Animated Oscar Glory for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse and Avatar: The Way of Water
The 2023 Oscars, or to be more formal the 95th Academy Awards took place last night. Among the scrum of glitz and glamour animation took a few moments to shine among the stars as awards were handed out for feature, short and VFX.
Before we begin, Skwigly readers deserve a pat on the back because for the first time all three categories were correctly guessed in our yearly poll.
Winning the award for Animated Feature was the much celebrated Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio.
With award in hand Co-Director Marc Gustafson said “It’s so good to know that this art-form we love so much, stop motion, is very much alive and well.” After a marathon of wins and acceptance speeches across award season, Del Toro repeated his passionate mantra “Animation is cinema, animation is not a genre and animation is ready to be taken to the next step, please help us keep animation in the conversation”
This is only the second time a stop motion feature has won the award in it’s history and is an historic won for Del Toro personally, who becomes the first person to win for Best Director, Best Picture and Animated Feature.
You can read our review of the film and interview with the directors below or listen to the Skwigly Animation Podcast episode here.
Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson on bringing ‘Pinocchio’ to life | Interview + Review
Scooping the award for Animated Short was The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse based on the best selling book by Charlie Mackesy, directed by Peter Baynton and Mackesy. The award was collected by Mackesy and Producer Matthew Freud. This was the first win for a British Director in this category since Suzie Templeman won for Peter and the Wolf in 2007.
Winning VFX was Avatar: the Way of Water with Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett accepting the award.