Best Animated Short Films & Inspiration

The teaser for the Class of 2026 films has just been released! Gobelins leaves us starry-eyed once again!

The announcement cinematic for a new StarCraft, unveiled at BlizzCon 2026. Dominion soldiers answer the call, with the sense of sacrifice and the sense of lighting that have built the studio's reputation for twenty years.

Kibali and Ronin, a chase, then a showdown that never lets you catch your breath. It is a demonstration before it is a story, and that is exactly what makes it useful: every pose is there to be pulled apart. Watch it in slow motion, repeatedly, guilt free.

A therapist notices that all his patients describe the same vision: a yellow double coming to replace them. He investigates, and digs up something he would have been better off leaving buried. A LEGO horror film, which on paper should not work, and works extremely well.

A perfectly normal day at the park. People are feeding the ducks, like everyone does, despite the signs. The film then spends several minutes showing them in great detail why the signs were there. Audience awards just about everywhere, from Viborg to Flatpack.

London, the nineties. Two lonely people meet by chance and decide, without overthinking it, to start something together. A school film presented at Annecy 2026 that handles its romance without ever overplaying it.

Nero is a black cat in Venice who hates water, loves music, and works for a feline mob boss. His life turns the day a street artist decides to adopt him, without asking his opinion. A Pixar gangster comedy from the director of Luca.

While his parents entertain guests, a child pulls on his boots and slips into the forest at night. There he meets a lonely creature with no intention of letting him go home just yet. Cristal for best short film and the audience award at Annecy 2025: the clean sweep.

A French-language channel of Blender resources and tutorials: modelling, sculpting, editing, installing the software. The kind of place you go when you want to learn in your own language without spending three hours translating a keyboard shortcut.

What if Zelda got the Arcane treatment? Two artists asked the question, did not wait for Nintendo to answer it, and spent a year and a half producing the answer themselves. Twenty seconds of animation, and a twenty-minute breakdown explaining how.

An animated music video with a line you would recognise anywhere, from the creator of the series Samuel. The drawing keeps its deliberately wobbly, tender quality, applied this time to a song. Short, gentle, and far more precise than it looks.

Prue heads into an enchanted forest outside Portland to get her baby brother back after crows abduct him. She finds a mansion, a woman consumed by grief, and a war about to break out. LAIKA back at large-scale stop-motion.

A family sits down to dinner while a leak slowly turns the house into a swimming pool. Nobody gets up. Nobody mentions it. The most uncomfortable film to watch with your own family, which is precisely the point.

Two Tuareg children whose music becomes the voice of a silenced people. The linework is deliberately imperfect, the Sahara is treated like a western set, and the story draws directly on what the band's members lived through. About exile, and about what remains once you leave.

The hundred best loops from a community 3D challenge, cut together over a single track. It is not a film, it is an idea reservoir: framing, atmosphere, transitions. Worth keeping around for the days when nothing comes.

The story of Alfred Nakache, French butterfly-stroke champion, Jewish, deported to Auschwitz, and back in competition after the war. Everything is told through water and swimming. Crystal Bear at the 2024 Berlinale and the André-Martin award at Annecy the same year.

Eight minutes in the Indian jungle, climbing toward a mountain summit to find out what is up there. The film deals with grief, reincarnation and Eastern philosophy, with hand-painted watercolour backgrounds and drawn cels to recapture the feel of the sixties.

On a freezing night, some logs warm themselves around a fire. When the firewood runs short, the group's solidarity lasts precisely as long as you would expect. Winner of the 2015 Swiss Film Prize for best animated film, for a very efficient piece of black comedy.

A grandfather explains how he came by a precious pearl. In early twentieth-century Montreal, a poor boy discovers that a girl nearby cries pearls, and starts selling them on. The ending puts the whole story back in question. Winner of the 2026 Oscar for Best Animated Short.

Mario, Luigi and the rest head into space to rescue Rosalina from Bowser Jr., who wants to drain her powers to fuel a cannon capable of destroying the universe. A perfectly reasonable plan, from Bowser Jr.'s point of view.

One minute built around a small toy found at the bottom of a cereal box, with no dialogue at all. A Canadian student film proving that a tiny object is enough to carry an idea, as long as you know what to do with it.

A toad cycles across a dead landscape loaded with empty bottles. It looks like a collector's obsession; it turns out to be a resurrection project, one bottle at a time. Not a single line of dialogue, and not one is needed.

The title card that opens every episode of Link Click season two, a series where two agents travel into the past through photographs. A few seconds of motion design that say more about a show than most full opening sequences manage.

The chronicle of a head cold, told from inside the nostrils. It starts with a sneeze, continues with collapsing dams and marine life in distress, and ends with recovery. It happens every year, but rarely this well staged.

A mother whose son has left home watches one of her baozi come to life. She raises it, it grows up, it wants independence, and she makes a radical decision. That particular scene traumatised a fair share of the audience. Winner of the 2019 Oscar for Best Animated Short.

An elk wakes the Spirit of Spring, who brings the forest back to life, then wanders near a volcano and wakes something considerably less accommodating. Everything burns, everything is reborn. The closing segment of Fantasia 2000, made by Disney's Paris studio.

An acorn wants to be the tallest tree in the forest and will accept no compromise on that. The film then handles the invoice. Made entirely in Blender, without a word of dialogue, and quietly asking one question: when the wind blows, does the ground actually hold?

A lonely wolf, shunned by everyone because of his reputation, secretly prepares a meal for his forest neighbours. A Christmas commercial that became a phenomenon within days, made entirely in France and without AI, to the point that a feature film was announced right after.

A ceremony made of offerings, consumption and excess, shot like a ritual that went wrong somewhere between the starter and dessert. From the same duo behind Lone Digger, which guarantees a certain flair for escalation.

A tiny vegan chef hosts his own cooking show from inside a tree stump, assisted by a robot, a snail and a caterpillar. His size turns every recipe into an endurance event. Several Emmy Awards to its name, including Outstanding Preschool Animated Series.

In a feudal Japan populated by fruit and vegetables, Citrus Sensei prepares his apprentice for his final mission: eliminate a bloodthirsty clan leader terrorising the country. Nothing goes to plan, which is the least you can expect when the mission is handed to a banana.

Franck is chronically late and has finally decided to talk to a therapist about it. He describes a strange dream, then discovers who his therapist actually is, and let us say the session does not end the way he planned. Voiced by Franck Pitiot, which is not a small detail.

Ollie trains alone on her skateboard in an abandoned shopping mall. She fails, starts over, doubts herself, and slowly reshapes the place through practice alone. A school film that pulls off something hard: making skate movement readable without draining its energy.

Hadenna crosses the galaxy looking for something that can give her brother his true body back. A science-fiction story carried by students with an ambition bordering on reckless, and a 2026 VES Award for best student project confirming the bet paid off.

A look at the animated films of autumn 2025: cinema releases, highlights, and what not to let slip by. Useful for planning your evenings three months ahead.

Among the coffee plantations, Hurle serves coffee to support her mother while dreaming of being somewhere else. Then a small-time thief goes past, she chases him, and her trajectory changes direction. Seven minutes that make you want to leave without telling anyone.

The first look at Mario's move to the big screen in space form: Rosalina abducted, a cannon threatening the universe, and a Bowser family still deeply averse to therapy. The teaser that started the wait.

CinéAnimation's rundown of the animated films worth seeing in French cinemas in September 2025. Handy for knowing what to catch before everyone starts talking about it, and for spotting the releases that slip under the radar.

Marines and pirates tear each other apart in an abandoned factory, and that is the pleasant half of the film. Then the life form ravaging the system collects the dead from both sides and puts them back to work. Directed by the creator of Astartes, which explains a great deal.

A week into their partnership, Judy and Nick pick up the trail of a snake, a species supposedly gone from Zootopia for a century. The investigation uncovers a hidden community and a founding lie. The feature won the BAFTA for Best Animated Film.

A film made alone, from writing to animation, mixing tablet drawing with modelled backgrounds. Its author is self-taught and co-created an animation app, which says a lot about his willingness to build his own tools when nothing suitable exists.

A young goat dreams of playing roarball like his idol, a superstar panther. Ten years later, a viral video gets him into a struggling team, and he discovers that professional sport is rarely played on the court alone.

CinéAnimation's recap of the animated films released in French cinemas in August 2025. The month when you assume nothing is happening and reliably miss two or three things.

Thirty years of DreamWorks told by the artists who were there, from the studio built to rival Disney to the one we know today. Produced and funded entirely independently by two animators, with no studio support whatsoever. Which is also what makes it interesting.

CinéAnimation's rundown of the animated films released in French cinemas in July 2025. The month when competition is fierce and it pays to know in advance what you are going to see.

Rumi, Mira and Zoey fill stadiums by day and hunt demons by night, their music powering the barrier that protects the world. Then a rival boy band of demons shows up to steal their fans. Winner of the 2026 Oscar for Best Animated Feature and ten Annie Awards out of ten.

Eleven-year-old Elio, obsessed with aliens, is teleported into space by mistake and taken for Earth's official ambassador. Nobody corrects the error, and he ends up handling an intergalactic diplomatic crisis. Winner of the 2026 Satellite Award for Best Animated Motion Picture.

Ten standalone episodes, ten teams, ten techniques, and the same rule throughout: no continuity, no safety net. This volume includes a musical episode directed by David Fincher, and it brought back four Emmy Awards in 2025 in the craft categories.

A flight toward a lost tower, in an atmosphere that owes a great deal to Porco Rosso and makes no secret of it. Made entirely in Blender by one person, with very controlled use of Grease Pencil to hold that mix of cartoon and realism.

At the campsite, all the kids agree: kissing is gross. The problem is that the second you want to kiss someone, your lips start glowing bright pink. No hiding it. Léo, who mocks the loudest, is about to find that out the hard way. Winner of the 2025 César for Best Animated Short.

The film talks about what the animation industry rarely talks about: precarity, the state of the sector, and that stubborn feeling of not belonging while doing your job perfectly well. If you have ever thought "they are going to find me out", this one is for you.

The opening piece of the A Horse Tale universe: a mare named Fleur de Lys and her companions set out to repair the broken balance of their world. A year and a half of solo work to lay the foundations of an entire series. The kind of project that earns respect before the first shot even plays.

Professeur Moustache and his assistant Nathanaël explain why movie science is, very often, complete nonsense. Lightsabers, shrinking, explosions in space: it all gets taken apart, three minutes per episode, narrated by François Morel. Enjoy the binge.

A post-apocalyptic Japan where genetically modified dinosaurs have outlived humanity. They have the intelligence, the engineering and the swords, but they kept their instincts, which settles inter-clan disputes rather poorly. The first original universe from a New Zealand studio.

A personal animation shot on a prehistoric theme, with a companion video on the same channel breaking down the process and workflow. The kind of content you watch twice: once for pleasure, once with the timeline in front of you.

The making-of the film where an old man patrols a futuristic Iceland, gets stranded, and works out fairly quickly that he is not alone in the fog. The film is impressive; the breakdown may be more so, because it shows what each shot actually costs.

A miniature dachshund with tiny legs and a personality far too big for them. One minute per episode, one dog situation per episode, and the uncomfortable certainty that your own dog does exactly the same thing.

A creature animation on a dragon, rendered in real time in Unreal Engine 5. No story, no context: just weight, inertia and wings that cost a lot to move. The kind of shot you put on loop to work out how it holds together.

A greedy cat, an exasperated owner, no dialogue, and a method unchanged since 2008: one gag, one minute, done. The series took several British awards in its first year alone, including the British Animation Award for Best Comedy.

The animals of the savannah, but perfectly spherical. They still try to hunt, run, climb and mate, with the results their new morphology permits. A school project that turned into a brand of its own.

A crocheted dinosaur has to unravel itself stitch by stitch to save his fox friend from a trap. The premise is exactly as cruel as it sounds. Eight wordless minutes, an avalanche of awards from Sydney to Austin, and a very solid reason to keep tissues nearby.

A young knight arrives at court convinced he is about to fight dragons. He discovers that the real monsters are a fickle client, endless back-and-forth and contradictory notes. Award-winning from Rome to Burgos, and painfully accurate for anyone who has ever invoiced a revision.

A little girl dreams of becoming an astronaut. Her father is a shoemaker. Eight minutes, not one word of dialogue, and a pair of shoes that carries an entire life. Audience Choice at SIGGRAPH 2018 and an Oscar nomination the year after. Bring a tissue. Make it two.

Some interns, one summer, and the urge to see how far you can push hand-drawn effects on top of live action. The result is more demonstration than story, and its authors went on to found a collective people would hear plenty about.

A club full of anthropomorphic animals, a dancer, a cat coming to see her, and one provocation too many. What follows is a massacre choreographed with a care the scene absolutely does not deserve. Four hundred million views later, you understand why.

A festival opener with a film noir look: gangsters, action, and a graphic energy borrowing as much from 101 Dalmatians as from Chinatown. Hand-drawn, with 3D for the vehicles. Short, but built to get a room going.

A housewife sets off on a path of revenge after her husband's death. Ten minutes of animated thriller made by a team of a dozen students, with an adult tone student films rarely take on.

The region's two finest rescuers head out on a call. They are competent, determined, perfectly equipped, and it is all going to go very badly. Winner of the 2019 BAFTA Student Award for animation. The casualty would probably rather have waited for the next team.

A rat powers through the subway, the office, the ads, the shops and the drinks in a full-speed pursuit of happiness. Nobody told him the race had a name. Winner of the Canal+ Creative Aid award at Annecy 2018, and a mirror nobody exactly asked for.

The crabs of the Gironde estuary can only walk in a straight line. They know it, they suffer from it, and they talk about it at length. Audience award at Annecy in 2004 and Grand Prix at Anima Brussels the year after: proof that one anatomical limitation is enough to build a classic.

The track opens on the smell of modelling clay, so the video is made of modelling clay. Four scenes for four verses, from childhood to adulthood, and between choruses you see the workshop itself. A starting idea taken entirely seriously, all the way through.

A pine cone becomes a log, then planks, then crates, then a perfect cabin in the middle of the forest. The creature who lived there finds the transformation considerably less charming, and accidentally restarts the whole cycle. One year of work and 4,425 photographs.

Mickey and friends enjoy a hayride until Pete abducts Minnie. The characters are then thrown out of their black-and-white cartoon, and Mickey works out that the edge of the screen can be used as a weapon. Winner of the 2014 Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject.

Presto wants to perform his hat trick. His rabbit wants dinner. The rabbit discovers that with two magically linked hats, the stage becomes an extremely painful negotiating table. The audience applauds throughout, convinced it is all part of the act.

Fifteen stories, fifteen video-game universes, no continuity between them. Each episode is a standalone short, which lets every team try things a long format would never allow. Winner of a 2025 Golden Reel Award for sound editing.

Onari lives in a village of Japanese folklore creatures and dreams of becoming a hero like the kami around her. She discovers her powers, then the truth about her origins, which completely upends the idea of who the monster is. Winner of two Annie Awards in 2023.

On a rainy evening, the objects of the city come alive and discover they have faces. A blue umbrella falls for a red one, their owners walk off in opposite directions, and the whole street organises itself to fix that. A textbook case in light, reflections and wet surfaces.

At night, in the corridors of the Disney studios, Mickey calls everyone in for a group photo. Over five hundred characters from eighty-five films show up, and the logistics go roughly as well as you would expect. Winner of the 2025 Emmy for Outstanding Animated Short Form Program.

A little penguin wants to fly. He has neither the body shape nor the judgment for it, which stops him precisely never. Drawn entirely on an iPad by a Disney veteran, with a real orchestra behind it. The result looks like Winnie the Pooh, and that is on purpose.

A sandpiper chick has to learn to feed itself on the beach, but a wave traumatised it and it refuses to leave the nest. A hermit crab is the one who hands it the solution. Winner of the 2017 Oscar for Best Animated Short, plus an Annie Award the same year.

A film about September 11th built around a father, his daughter and voicemail messages. After the impact he tries to reach her, while she, watching the footage, wants time to run backwards. A yo-yo carries the whole metaphor: it goes down, and you very badly want it to come back up.

The star-spirit of a little girl who has died crosses the sky to reach her family on her birthday. The wind blows her off course, and she has to cross Istanbul to find her way back. Best Animated Short at Tribeca 2023 and the audience award at Austin.

A black cat escapes a flood aboard a boat, thrown together with a capybara, a lemur, a dog and a secretarybird. No dialogue, no humans, and the 2025 Oscar for Best Animated Feature. The capybara is, by broad consensus, the character of the year.

In a Portuguese fishing village in the late 1950s, the ocean wears a different face depending on who is looking: provider for some, playground for others, killer for a few. Made for the 2024 Annecy festival as part of its tribute to Portugal.

Eleven-year-old Karin is abandoned at a temple by her debt-ridden father. There she befriends a ghost cat who talks, walks and rides a scooter, then sets off with him to find her mother in the Land of the Dead. Rotoscoped, hence the constant sense of watching real movement.

Sixty seconds, fifty-eight shots, thirty-six athletes, and one simple idea carried all the way through: shoot sport the way you would shoot a love story. The BBC's launch film for its Paris Olympics coverage, and a Gold winner at the Shots Awards EMEA.

Astronauts have just planted their flag on the Moon when a creature decides the ceremony has gone on long enough. It removes them methodically, down to the last one, who will negotiate his survival with a can of beans. Photoreal sets, fully cartoon characters, and a Gold at the AEAF Awards.

The 212th clone legion and Commander Cody, in full action: jetpacks, explosions, droids that do not last long. A fan film made in eighteen months by a small team, on a largely open-source pipeline. Proof that this level of image no longer requires a studio.

The teaser for a Swedish cartoon project that has held a lot of people hostage since 2018: the full film still has not landed. What does exist is a frankly indecent display of rigging and deformation, plus a making-of that is worth the trip on its own.

A pair of not especially bright birds tries to save its eggs from a volcanic eruption. Every solution they come up with makes things worse, which is exactly the programme. Gold medal at the 2023 Student Academy Awards, international animation category.

The zombies and creatures of ParaNorman take on the summer Olympic events, with the physical abilities you would expect. A 2012 promo spot riding the London Games, and a reminder that stop-motion can be very funny in fifteen seconds.

An office worker catches a stranger's eye across a train platform. He will spend the rest of his day firing paper planes at her from the office window. Departmental productivity took a hit, but the film brought back an Oscar and an Annie Award, so we will call it profitable.

A young Iranian woman tells the story of her school years through the uniform she was made to wear, unfolding the creases of the cloth the way you unfold a memory. Seven minutes, no tricks, and the Jean-Luc Xiberras award for a first film at Annecy 2023. Oscar-nominated the year after.

An Aztec priest prepares to hold a ceremony in honour of Quetzalcoatl. Made by GOBELINS students for the 2023 Annecy festival, the year of Mexico. Few shots, a great deal of presence.

A personal project devoted entirely to walking, in which the author forces himself to animate characters with techniques he has not mastered yet. No story, no world to save: just movement observed very closely. Exactly what you watch when you want to get better.

Jeremy and Aurora drift out at sea on a tree trunk, paddling with cake spatulas. They meet a bird, face whatever lives underneath, and above all face each other. Winner of the Jury Award in the short film competition at Annecy 2023.

Claire has just moved to a cold, impersonal city, and her body is literally starting to vanish. The metaphor is direct, unapologetic, and works all the better for the remarkable image work carrying it. Winner of the 2024 VES Award for best student project.

One minute of swashbuckling, a daring rescue, and a punchline resting entirely on timing. Nothing more, nothing less, and exactly the right length.

Edo period. A brilliant sculptor loses his right arm, builds himself a mechanical one, and sets out to settle accounts with the men who betrayed him. A stop-motion pilot made to convince financiers, which mostly convinced everyone else. Winner of a 2024 Webby Award.

Two wildebeest argue by a river. One of them is right, and fully intends to say so. A minute later, the film has established that winning an argument and surviving an argument are two different things.

A group of teenagers goes camping in an English forest and runs into some adorable little creatures. Adorable up to a point. A very 1980s horror comedy whose entire production files are online: you can literally open the film up and look at how it was made.

One of the ten opening films made by GOBELINS for the 2023 Annecy festival, the year Mexico was the guest of honour. One minute to set an atmosphere and pull the room into the film, which is a far harder exercise than it looks.

A 3D character crosses a Los Angeles street with a walk that should not exist in any physics simulation. There is no story, no moral, no dialogue. There is just a man walking extremely badly, and it became an internet monument.

Two octopuses in love, a fishmonger with other plans for them, and two minutes of chase through the white and blue alleys of the Cyclades. Best of Show and the audience award at SIGGRAPH, then an Oscar nomination. You never needed length to leave a mark.

A 3D sketch made entirely solo in Blender, on personal time, by an Indian animator who parodies his country's cinema. Roughly a month and a half of work for a handful of seconds on screen. Well played, Aju.