On the Road to the 97th Oscars: The Animated Features Nominees

Take a deeper look at ‘Flow,’ ‘Inside Out 2,’ ‘Memoir of a Snail,’ ‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,’ and ‘The Wild Robot,’ all vying for the Best Animated Feature Oscar on March 2, 2025.

Massive floods, evil gnomes, eye-popping orgies, wild robots and anxiety personified. This year’s nominees for the 97th Academy Awards’ Best Animated Feature Film of the Year showcase an eclectic set of filmmakers, animation styles, and storytelling chops, highlighting top-tier skills in stop-motion and 3DCG animation from both big-name and indie studio teams.

With the awards ceremony taking place Sunday, March 2, AWN has created a final spotlight on the nominees: Dream Well Studio’s Flow, Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, IFC Films’ Memoir of a Snail, DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot and Pixar’s Inside Out 2.

Flow, a small indie co-production between studios and artists in Latvia, France and Belgium, is one of the most unexpected entries among this year’s set of films; it now holds the record for the biggest theatrical run in Latvian history. The movie’s Golden Globe award was also displayed at the Latvian National Museum of Art and a statue of the film’s main character, a black cat, was erected in Riga, Latvia at the foot of the Freedom Monument. There’s certainly a lot of Latvian pride for Flow as the film takes its place alongside major studio productions like Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot adaptation and Kelsey Mann’s Inside Out sequel.

Memoir of a Snail is another independent film nominee. Oscar-winning director Adam Elliot (Harvey Krumpet) will be back at the awards with his latest feature that has shocked many viewers and critics with its explicit and emotional adult content. It’s only the second R-rated animated film ever to receive an Oscar nomination.

Then there’s Vengeance Most Fowl, which is only the second Wallace & Gromit feature-length film to be produced since The Curse of the Were-Rabbit became the first stop-motion film to win the Best Animated Feature award in 2005.

Read below for this year’s full breakdown of all five nominees. A hearty congratulations from AWN to all the nominated teams!

Flow
Nominees: Gints Zilbalodis, Matīss Kaža, Ron Dyens and Gregory Zalcman

After three shorts films and one feature that he made by himself, award-winning filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis decided it was time to learn how to work with a team. Flow, the 3D-animated Latvian film nominated for both Best Animated Feature Film and Best International Feature Film at the 97th Academy Awards, is Zilbalodis’ first collaborative project. The animated feature, made entirely in the free 3D modelling software Blender, follows the adventures of a cat who also learns the value of relying on others.

Produced by Dream Well Studio, Take Five, and Sacrebleu Productions, the film centers on a cat who wakes up in a universe invaded by water, where all human life seems to have disappeared. He finds refuge on a boat with a group of other animals – a secretary bird, capybara, Labrador retriever and ring-tailed lemur – but finds that getting along with them is an even bigger challenge than overcoming a fear of water.

Check out the trailer:

“It's a very personal story to me,” shares Zilbalodis, whose film not only won a Golden Globe for Best Animated Motion Feature but also won three awards at Annecy and the feature animation grand prize at Ottawa. “I thought that a cat would be a great character to convey [collaboration], because cats are very independent and want to do things their own way. I had this imposter syndrome going into the project. Doubts and insecurities. But you have to face those insecurities. If I kept making films by myself for the rest of my life, they wouldn’t be as good.”

With his film one of the few independent animation productions to make it to the Oscars, Zilbalodis adds, “We made this film in a place where there isn't a big industry, so I think it's really exciting that people from different parts of the world and different experiences can tell their stories and can take more risks with smaller budgets and a smaller team.”

Read more about the film in AWN’s other coverage:

Inside Out 2
Nominees: Kelsey Mann and Mark Nielsen

It’s been nine years since Pixar released Pete Docter’s brilliantly funny and inventive animated comedy, Inside Out. The 2015 film earned more than $850 million globally and went on to garner numerous awards including an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It introduced audiences to what goes on inside the mind of a young girl, Riley, as she struggles with her emotions after moving with her family to San Francisco from Minnesota. Her coming-of-age story is told through the actions of her emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger.

Now nominated for this year’s Best Animated Feature, Pixar’s Inside Out 2 picks up the storytelling of Riley’s emotions as she enters the next phase of her life. In the 3DCG comedy sequel, director Kelsey Mann and producer Mark Nielsen fast forward to Riley as a newly minted teenager just as her emotional headquarters is undergoing a sudden demolition to make room for something entirely unexpected: new Emotions! Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust, who’ve long been running a successful operation by all accounts, aren’t sure how to feel when Anxiety shows up. And it looks like she’s not alone.

Check out the trailer:

“I must give props to a lot of people, obviously, but a big part of that is Meg LeFauve,” says Mann. “She was a writer on the first film… and she was the first person [on this film]. It was just the three of us for the longest time. Her big thing is making sure that the humor is always coming from the characters. I hope she reads this and hears that because that'll warm her heart. She works hard at it.”

In the film, Maya Hawke voices Anxiety, a new arrival bound to shake up everything. A bundle of frazzled energy, Anxiety enthusiastically ensures Riley’s prepared for every possible negative outcome. She’s joined by Envy, voiced by Ayo Edebiri, Ennui, voiced by Adèle Exarchopoulos, and Embarrassment, voiced by Paul Walter Hauser. The all-star cast also includes Amy Poehler as Joy, Phyllis Smith as Sadness, Lewis Black as Anger, Tony Hale as Fear, and Liza Lapira as Disgust.

“[Anxiety] has an antagonistic role in the film, but she's not a villain,” explains Dovi Anderson, animation supervisor along with Evan Bonifacio. “And we do want the audience to identify with her, and empathize with her, and see where she's coming from.”

Read more about the film in AWN’s other coverage:

Memoir of a Snail
Nominees: Adam Elliot and Liz Kearney

200 characters, 200 sets and 5,000 snail pieces make up the stop-motion animated feature Memoir of a Snail, which had its world premiere at Annecy this past June, with a select U.S. theatrical release this past October. This intricate work of cinema won Annecy’s Cristal Award for a Feature Film, Animation Is Film’s Special Jury Prize, Sitges’ Best Animated Feature Film and others. It’s also one of only a handful of animated features in the industry to carry an R rating.

“I get emails from angry parents all the time telling me, ‘Your films are not for children!’ and I say, ‘Of course they’re not! Why are you taking your children to my R-rated film?’” says Elliot, who, prior to Memoir of a Snail, created a series of stop-motion shorts, all highly personal stories from the creator’s own childhood, including Harvey Krumpet, which won the best animated short Oscar in 2004. “I mean, we have an orgy in the story, swingers, alcoholics and child abuse.”

The Australian animated tragicomedy from IFC Films, written, produced and directed by Elliot, stars the voices of Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Eric Bana, Magda Szubanski, Dominique Pinon, Tony Armstrong, Paul Capsis, Nick Cave, and Jacki Weaver. The film's plot is loosely inspired by Elliot's own life and follows the trials and tribulations in the life of lonely misfit Grace Pudel (Snook), from childhood to adulthood. The story begins by introducing Grace, her twin brother Gilbert (Smit-McPhee), and their paraplegic alcoholic father Percy (Pinon). When Percy dies, Grace and Gilbert are separated and begin their own coming-of-age odysseys. There are heartfelt moments along the way, mixed in with electroshock punishments, fetish-filled scrapbooks, nudist colonies and, well, that should paint a clear enough picture.

In case it doesn’t, check out the trailer:

“I’ve been saying this for 28 years, but animation is not a genre,” notes Elliot. “It’s a medium. There’s room for all types of animation. I mean, the reason I even became an animator is because you get to play God. You’re not restricted by anything. Characters can look however we want them to look, and we get to be megalomaniacs and control freaks.”

Referring to his stop-motion character model for Grace, Elliot notes, “If she gives a bad performance, I roll her up in a ball and start again.”

Read more about the film in AWN’s other coverage:

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl
Nominees: Nick Park, Merlin Crossingham and Richard Beek

Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham dusted off The Wrong Trousers’ silent, villainous penguin Feathers – who served as the first true antagonist in the Wallace & Gromit franchise – and gave him a knack for computer hacking to return to his evil ways in the aptly named Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

In the latest installment of the well-known Aardman franchise, available to watch on Netflix, the loyal and trusted canine companion Gromit has growing concerns that his inventor owner Wallace is becoming too dependent on his inventions. The concern proves justified when Wallace invents a “smart” gnome, Norbot, that seems to develop a mind of its own. When it emerges that a vengeful figure from their past – Feathers – who Wallace and Gromit helped imprison many years ago, might be (definitely) masterminding things, it falls to Gromit to battle sinister forces and save his master… or Wallace may never be able to invent again (heaven forbid)!

Check out the trailer:

“It’s great to be back with them in a feature,” says Park of his famed inventing duo, whose last feature-length film released 20 years ago. “They’re like family, really. They’re our children who we’ve grown up with. And it's great working with them again.”

Crossingham, who directs with Park on the new film, added, “I think what Nick found [in Wallace & Gromit] was something that many people relate to, whether they're pet owners like me who talk to their dogs like they’re human all the time or if they’re people like Gromit who feel misunderstood. And it's the underdog story, but that might not have been an intentional bit.”

Read more about the film in AWN’s other coverage:

The Wild Robot
Nominees: Chris Sanders and Jeff Hermann

Published in 2016, “The Wild Robot,” by the multi-award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown, was not only a New York Times bestseller, but was named one of the best children's books of the year by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly, among others. Initially crafted for young readers, but swiftly recognized for its universal truths, it is, says DreamWorks Animation president Margie Cohn, “the kind of story that becomes a narrative and emotional touchstone for young readers and their parents, who then will share it with every subsequent generation to come.”

The Wild Robot, DreamWorks’ adaptation of Brown’s literary sensation, is produced by Jeff Hermann and written and directed by three-time Oscar nominee Chris Sanders (How to Train Your Dragon, The Croods, Lilo & Stitch). The powerful story about the discovery of self, the bridge between technology and nature, and what it means to be alive and connected to all living things, has won nine Annie Awards, four VES Awards, the Critic’s Choice Award for Best Animated Feature Film, and numerous others. It has not only been animated for Best Animated Feature but also for Best Original Score (Kris Bowers) and Best Sound (Randy Thom, Brian Chumney, Gary A. Rizzo and Leff Lefferts).

The story follows the journey of a robot, ROZZUM unit 7134, or “Roz” for short (Lupita Nyong'o), that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings. Gradually Roz builds relationships with the animals on the island, including becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling (Kit Connor), who, after a number of false starts, Roz names “Brightbill.”

Check out the trailer:

“We all read the book and one of the very first things we agreed on is that it was a very different sort of project,” says Hermann. “And we needed to know if everybody was okay making this book. We didn't want to change it; we wanted to be true to it. I think it was the gentle nature of it, and the strong emotional through line that everybody was really attracted to. I mean, we were attracted to it for the same reason that so many people read it.”

And, when it came to landing on an animation style, the team wanted to make sure the visual impact would be just as strong as the story.

“Probably the best way to describe it is that they took the painterly and illustrative style of Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and they softened it,” explains Sanders. “They put a good deal of [Golden Age Disney artist] Tyrus Wong back in. So, these forests feel more like [Hayao] Miyazaki. They feel more like real forests. There's a believability that they achieved in this painted style – and it is painted: the skies, the trees, the ground. It's all done by human hands. There's no substitute for that, and you can tell. So, and I think it's safe to say this, we have closed the loop between where animation began and CG has gotten us and brought it full circle to achieve the most perfect look I've ever seen.”

Read more about the film in AWN’s other coverage:

Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.