Nineteen Films In First Round Of Consideration For Best Animated Feature Academy Award

Academy Award season is upon us and as it gets closer to next March’s Oscar telecast we’re going to be hearing a lot about which pictures are eligible for which awards. And that starts with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences releasing the titles of the 19 animated films that qualify for the Best Animated Feature category.

Not surprisingly, the list does contain a lot of the animated studio fare that we’ve seen over the year, but it also does feature a few smaller films, both domestic and foreign, that have only gotten limited releases. Hopefully, by just being eligible to be nominated will draw some more attention to these films, as they tend to be the ones that generally have a bit more artistic merit than typical Hollywood product.

Here is the complete list of eligible films –

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Epic
Ernest and Celestine
The Fake
Free Birds
Frozen
Khumba
The Legend of Sarila
A Letter to Momo
Monsters University
O Apóstolo
Planes
Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie – Rebellion
Rio: 2096 A Story of Love and Fury
The Smurfs 2
Turbo
The Wind Rises

In their press release the Academy also notes –

Several of the films have not yet had their required Los Angeles qualifying runs. Submitted features must fulfill the theatrical release requirements and comply with all of the category’s other qualifying rules before they can advance in the voting process. At least eight eligible animated features must be theatrically released in Los Angeles County within the calendar year for this category to be activated.

Films submitted in the Animated Feature Film category may also qualify for Academy Awards in other categories, including Best Picture, provided they meet the requirements for those categories.

The Academy Awards will be presented on March 2, 2014.