BAFTA Animation Nominees Announced

We've had the Golden Globes. We've had the Oscars and Annie Awards nominations. But now it is the turn of the British Academy to take the spotlight. The nominations have been announced this week for the BAFTA Film Awards.

Like the awards as a whole, the Best Animated Film category often has some overlap with the Oscars. But when it comes to picking a winner, BAFTA is as likely to go their own way. Past winners have included The Lego Movie, Kubo and The Two Strings, Klaus, right up to last year's winner Wallace and Gromit: Vegeance Most Fowl, which also took home the inaugural Children's and Family Film award.

This year the nominees for Best Animated Film are again very similar to the Oscars- the difference being that only three films are nominated this year. The Academy has a long history of giving the award to Disney and Pixar films- Disney having had 8 nominations and Pixar having had a whopping 20. So, it's not a big surprise to see Elio and Zootropolis 2 (better known outside the UK as Zootopia 2) both scoring nominations. Elio's awards season success, perhaps goes some way to making up for its box-office disappointment.

The final spot goes to Little Amélie also known as Little Amélie or the Character of Rain.The 2D animated French film has been having an extremely successful Awards season and festival fun. The film is nominated despite not having been released in the UK yet.

Elsewhere, the second iteration of the Children's and Family Film Award offers more opportunities for animation.  Zootropolis 2 gets a second nomination here (does that make it the favourite in both categories?).  Another French animated film that has been doing extremely well, Ugo Bienvenu's Arco, gets the nomination it missed out on in the Best Animated Film Category. The nominees are rounded out by Disney's live-action/CG remake of Lilo and Stitch and Indian live-action film Boong.

The nominees for the British Short Animation category are J.P. Vine and Locksmith Animation's Cardboard,  Solstice from Luke Angus, and the acclaimed Two Black Boys In Paradise from director Baz Sells.

In the Special Visual Effects category, the nominees are: Avatar: Fire and Ash, F1, Frankenstein, How To Train Your Dragon (remake), and The Lost Bus.

The BAFTA Film Awards will take place on February 22, and will be broadcast on the BBC in the UK.

[source]