Oscar® Nominated Animated Shorts 02/26
A SLS Special Screening Event Recap
It’s Awards season in Los Angeles and if you live here you see it all around whether you like it or not! Billboards. Posters. Bus ads. etc. I am a member of the Local 700 Editor’s Guild and my inbox is bursting with FYC (For Your Consideration) event invites for Oscar® Nominated film screenings and Q&A’s and even art shows. These events are intended to appeal to members of the Academy to watch the nominated films and vote on the film categories. They are responsible for choosing the winners, after all! For anyone else, it’s just a cool chance to watch some top notch films from the past year and potentially catch an event that features the filmmakers who made the films!
Silver Lake Shorts was approached by The Animation Showcase to help produce a screening event to showcase 4 out of the 5 nominated animation short films. They are a strategy agency that essentially helps to promote the Animated nominated films during awards season, which is a period of time that voting is open to Academy members. Here’s the full list of all of the films and nomination categories for the 98th Academy Awards that will be held on Sunday March 9th. There are just two animation categories- Animated Feature Film & Animated Short Film. Typically these FYC events take place at upscale venues like the Soho House in West Hollywood or various movie theaters around town, but The Animation Showcase was interested in having an event with us the was more casual (at El Cid, a flamenco bar and restaurant) and accessible (free to attend) to be able to screen these films, have a Q&A with the filmmakers, and give anyone in attendance the chance to meet and talk with the filmmakers. We were immediately in!
Over 150 people filed into El Cid on the night of Wednesday, February 25th and took their seats inside and outside on the patio. The screening started at 8pm with an introduction from Jared Corwin (Co-Executive Director of SLS) and Benoit Berthe Siward (CEO of The Animation Showcase).
We screened the films in the following order:
Forevergreen by Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears
Butterfly by Florence Miailhe and Ron Dyens
Retirement Plan by John Kelly and Andrew Freedman
THE GIRL WHO CRIED PEARLS by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski
Side note:
You may notice that we only screened 4 out of the 5 Animated Short Film Nominees. ‘The Three Sisters’ by Konstantin Bronzit was not available to The Animation Showcase, however you can watch the trailer here. We learned this film has an interesting conversation surrounding it’s nomination- essentially the filmmaker submitted it under a pseudonym and a different country (Cyprus) than it’s actual origin (Russia)- all in the name of what he calls a “social experiment”.
There are a few articles exploring it more in depth, like this one by Chris Robinson, a writer of Cartoon Brew and the Artistic Director with OIAF, that interviews the filmmaker himself and is titled ‘Social Experiment Or Hoax? – The Curious Case Of ‘The Three Sisters’ According To Director Konstantin Bronzit’
After all of the films were shown, including a few behind the scenes clips, the screening concluded. Jared and Benoit briefly said a few words and introduced Mireia Vilanova, a SLS regular, Producer and Filmmaker who has a wide range of experience in the film industry. She has had her work featured in festivals around the world, including Sundance, TIFF, Locarno and Tribeca. She has received numerous accolades, including the Jury Award for Animation at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival for her work producing the animated short film Living with a Visionary by Stephen P. Neary. She serves as Producer and Director of Development at the boutique animation studio Cartuna, where she oversees original development, co-productions and co-financing opportunities for film, television and short form. Mireia is a proud member of the Television Academy, where she serves on the Animation Peer Group Executive Committee, the Producers Guild of America and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). She is a Sundance Producers Lab Fellow, Berlinale Talent, PGA Create Fellow, Film Independent Project Involve Fellow, Women in Film Fellow, Gotham Fellow, and a recipient of the Berlinale VFF Talent Highlight Award for the animated feature Silence Sometimes, directed by Goya nominee Álvaro Robles. She holds an MFA from USC's Peter Stark Producing Program and a BA from Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.
Believe it or not, this was our first Q&A for Silver Lake Shorts. Needless to say, we thought of Mireia to serve as a moderator as soon as it was decided that the filmmakers would be in attendance and a Q&A would follow the screening. For about an hour, she asked many thoughtful questions that prompted very insightful and in-depth responses from each filmmaker. We would highly recommend her for any Q&A moderation!
The following is a portion of the Q&A annotated:
[edited slightly for clarity]
Mireia Vilanova:
What advice do you have for the filmmakers here in this room who want to make things that matter to them but just don’t know how to do it in the current world that we live in?
Chris Lavis [THE GIRL WHO CRIED PEARLS]:
Move to a country with arts funding and socialized medicine. [audience laughs]
Nathan Engelhardt [Forevergreen]:
I think if you have a story in your heart and you want to share it with the world, people catch a vision of what you’re trying to do [and want to get involved]. What I have learned about this community is that, while I do not recommend not paying people, the community we built [for this film production] is pretty incredible. We had a front row seat to see incredible generosity from this industry, from our peers, from our friends and the relationships we’ve built over decades. So sometimes you’d have an animator, who is also working independently on their own passion project, [agree to work on the film for free] but then ask [in return] ‘hey would you animate a couple shots on my film?’ We had a big crew because that was one of the strategies to make it as easy for people as possible [with the workload] and so [in this case] an animator would come onto the project like, ‘I’ll do two shots on your film, would you do two shots on my film?’ So there was a great reciprocal generosity that was happening. It’s really quite beautiful. There was no money exchanged [for the artists on the film] so there are creative ways that you can [make a film] if you don’t have a budget. Plus, we all have a film studio in our pockets, right? Sometimes the best innovation and the best breakthroughs in storytelling come from limitations. Limitations can really birth unique things, I think.
Jeremy Spears [Forevergreen]:
I just want to jump in on that- so we all have these phones that are amazing [tools]. I was 15 or 16 years old when I made my first animated film and I shot it with a super eight millimeter [camera] because it was the only thing I had where I could click frame by frame. Actually it was the only thing accessible to me [because] my dad had one of those giant VHS camcorders, if you remember those, and we had such limitations back then. I look at what we have now and I’m so excited about where we are at with our technology. We can do so many things from just our phone or from things that are accessible to us [including] new innovative programs like Moho [2D Animation Software that was used to created his short film ‘Forevergreen’]. I think it’s a really exciting time technology wise. The last thing I’ll say is that you really just have to have a great story to tell. I don’t want to diminish anything but it doesn’t matter as much to have [your film] be the most pristine [technically]. Whatever you’re aiming for, as long as it comes from your heart and it flows out of you from your head and through your arm and onto the piece of paper or whatever medium you’re using, your story will carry through in such a beautiful way because it’s you[r artistic vision].
John Kelly [Retirement Plan]:
I heard the actor Tim Blake Nelson talking about how he asked the Coen Brothers, I think he asked Joel Coen [specifically], ‘why do you make and write the films that you do?’ and Joel Coen’s answer was, ‘I choose the path of least resistance’. I think for me on this film, you know, it’s the first sort of film like this that I’ve made. [In the past] I made a short film, maybe 10 years ago, but this is really the first kind of personal short film that I’ve made in 20 years. It was really just allowing myself to get out of the way of myself, you know, to not kind of think about what other people want to watch [for] a film festival. [It allowed me to] just think about what felt right to me and kind of indulge myself a little bit, but not too much, and so I think that was the lesson with this film. It just sort of flowed in a way that I’ve never experienced before and I think it was just [important] to release control and let it happen [for itself] a little bit.
Florence Miailhe [Butterfly] translated from French by Martine Melloul
Animation requires a lot of time and it’s important to tell a story that is very important to you. She [Florence] started with 35 millimeter [film] also and nowadays there’s a lot easier access [to filmmaking resources]. [In the past] you couldn’t do a movie that was not [attached with] a producer with money that would help you see the film through [to completion]. So she learned how to do animation by herself. She went to art school [but it wasn’t until] 10 years later [that] she taught herself animation and [developed] her own technique. Basically what she’s saying is that, there are so many means [to make something] today. I think this generation is really lucky because you have the iPhones, you have computer programs, you have everything [available to you to use as a filmmaker] and you can mix and match and and do a lot of things yourself that even 10 years ago was not possible to do. Today, if you have a story to tell, just go ahead and do it.
After the Q&A wrapped up, the crowd dispersed to the outdoor patio until El Cid closed. All of the Filmmakers kindly stuck around to meet and chat with people.
What was especially great is that we got feedback from one SLS regular who went out of their way to let us know how much they appreciated the event and that it was very inspiring to hear the filmmakers talk about their films in person and suggested that SLS should do more Q&A’s. The good news is that we are already planning another Q&A in the next few months for a Special Screening event with an animation legend. We’re excited to share more on that when we can so keep a lookout!
Another cool piece of feedback we learned from a SLS regular was that it was his birthday on the same night of the event and he used to go to the movies with his Grandma to watch the FYC screenings as a kid here in LA. He said it was a really nostalgic and meaningful way to spend his birthday.
Feedback and stories like these from community members are what help make it all worth it to know what it means to the people who attend our events. In general- please always feel free to reach out, in person at our events or via Email/Instagram DM, to tell us about things like this! It truly makes our day.
We would like to give a BIG thank you to our sponsor The Animation Showcase and Benoit Berthe Siward, their CEO, for helping to make this screening and live Q&A with the filmmakers possible. This was such a fun and inspiring event that we were thrilled to help produce and would love to do more of!
And best of luck to all of the talented filmmakers in the Animated Short Film category. They are all winners in their own right!
Before we go:
Here’s a glimpse at some photos from the night posted on Instagram and used with permission by SLS friend, Pavida Changkaew (Patty) @patty1na.draw
Patty and friends are pictured here with the ‘Forevergreen’ filmmakers.
Save the Date:
Our next monthly screening is coming up soon on Friday, March 6th at El Cid
Doors at 7pm & Screening at 8pm
*Trailer and free RSVP link on Partiful go up on Monday 03/02 around noon PST!
Thank you so much for reading!
<3
Karissa
& The Silver Lake Shorts Team