Innovative and Engaging: This Year’s Animation Films are a Hopeful Sign for the Future

People are screaming it from cinema’s rooftops: it’s been a banner year for animation — critically and at the box-office. And this year’s Oscar nominated animated features are reaffirming that animation is more than just something to keep the kids occupied as the adults do whatever adult things adults do. It always has been. Take a look at films like the infamous black comedy Fritz the Cat, the French experimental sci-fi flick Fantastic Planet, or the personal war docudrama Waltz with Bashir and you’ll quickly get a sense of the wide range of themes, topics, and styles tackled by animation.

This year’s crop of nominated films reminds us that animation has a place in the moviemaking ecosystem – they don’t just have to be family friendly, they can be intellectually stimulating, and stylistically boundary-pushing, too. To carry the cartoon mantle, four of this year’s Oscar-nominated animation directors joined Roger Durling in the beautiful Arlington theatre as a part of SBIFF’s animation panel to discuss their films, as well as the state of animation today. On the panel was:

Chris Sanders for The Wild Robot, Kelsey Mann for Inside Out 2, Nick Park for Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and Gints Zilbalodis for Flow.

Entertaining as all these films are, each movie also deals with serious topics. Both The Wild Robot and Flow tackle themes of cooperation, survival, and our place in the world; Inside Out 2 wrangles with a teenager and her emotions as puberty rears its hormonal head; and Wallace & Gromit takes on the dangers of AI, manifested as a garden gnome turned evil. 

In this film lover’s humble opinion, it’s Flow that takes the cake for being the most compelling of the bunch. Following a group of unlikely animals trying to survive an apocalyptic flood, director Zilbalodis manages to create a visually stunning piece of art, with a naturalism and organic quality not often seen in animated works. Choosing to mostly restrain from anthropomorphizing its computer-generated furry cast, Zilbalodis was still able to create an incredibly moving fable that transcends its dialogue-free animal characters. It results in a piece that really resonates with something deeper. And while it’s a surprisingly existential film, it’s certainly suitable for all ages.

As Durling rightly observed, Zilbalodis and his fellow panelists have not only shown us animation’s capacity to deal with serious topics, but were also remarkably innovative. In a big win for fans of the democratization of technology and filmmaking, Flow was created on the free open-source software, Blender. And Chris Sanders implemented an immersive painterly style, while Nick Parks continued on with his old school handmade claymation. Is this a good sign of the times to come? Chris Sanders feels hopeful:

“I think the really exciting thing that’s going on right now is that I feel technologically we’ve come out of a tunnel. Everything’s possible again. I really do feel like we’ve reconnected with animation’s origins in the most amazing way possible. I think the future is really and truly thrilling. Individual styling is wide open now. Everything is possible.”

In a world that feels increasingly overrun by faceless corporations and technology with no human touch (Wallace and Gromit, care to comment?) it often feels like the art and media with which we engage all blends together and feels lifeless. With The Wild Robot’s tangible painterly quality; the handmade claymation of Wallace & Gromit; Inside Out 2’s refreshing take on a teenager’s struggle with her emotions and changing body; and finally Flow’s organic naturalism created on a platform free to everyone, it feels like these filmmakers are pushing the boundaries and fighting against the homogeneity that’s dominated the industry for far too long. Hopefully other animators and filmmakers are taking note.  

Where to Watch:

Where to Watch:
-Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – Free Screening at Marjorie Luke Theatre on February 15th @ 10 am. Also streaming on Netflix.
-The Wild Robot – Free Screening at Marjorie Luke Theatre on February 15th @ 2 pm. Also streaming on Peacock.
-Flow – Available to rent, and coming soon to The Criterion Channel
-Inside Out 2 – Disney+ and available to rent