'2026 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts' dazzle and delight

From CGI to stop-motion, these films are poignant and funny

An old man eagerly plans how he’ll spend the rest of his life in John Kelly’s “Retirement Plan.” (Roadside Attractions)

Three sisters living on an island. A lost bear who befriends a tree. A lonely girl whose tears turn to pearls. An old man looking back on his life. An old man looking ahead to the rest of his life.

These are the five films that make up the Oscar nominees for Best Animated Shorts, and they couldn’t be more different either stylistically or narratively. They’re all worth seeing, for various reasons, and as is tradition are screening together in theaters as an anthology.

My favorite, hands down, is Irish filmmaker John Kelly’s “Retirement Plan” (which is also streaming on YouTube courtesy of The New Yorker). An old man (voiced by Domhnall Gleeson) excitedly ticks off all the things he’ll finally get to do now that he’s retired. Some are mundane (“I will clean up my desktop”), some are funny (“I will have so much money from the pension I haven’t started yet”), and some are poignant (“I will be that person. I will have that conversation.”)

Rendered in simple, clean animation that reminded me of Chris Ware cartoons, “Retirement Plan” beautifully sums up the whole of human experience in about seven minutes. I appreciated that it doesn’t preach that some things are more worth spending time on than others. It’s message is simple, and universal: It’s all time, and we all wish we had more of it.

French filmmaker Florence Miailhe’s “Papillon (Butterfly),” on the other hand, is about an old man looking back on his life as he swims in a lake. The story is inspired by Alfred Nakache, a champion French Jewish swimmer who Miailhe’s father knew in the French Resistance. The film immerses the viewer in his extraordinary life, from competing in the 1936 Berlin Olympics to surviving Auschwitz.

Nakache’s life is rendered in beautiful hand-painted animation, one image flowing into the next as the swimmer remembers the hardships and joys of his life. It’s a powerful little film.

“The Girl Who Cried Pearls” is a gorgeous Canadian fable made using stop-motion figures. (Roadside Attractions)

Come to think of it, “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” is also about an old man recounting his life, although Canadian filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski have created a dark fable set in turn-of-the-century Montreal. Colm Feore provides the voice of a wealthy old man who tells his granddaughter about growing up poor on the Montreal wharfs, and meeting a lonely, abused girl whose tears turn into pearls.

It’s an entrancing tale told through painstaking stop-motion animation, the intricately-detailed figures and textured backgrounds looking as if they were made out of discarded trash.

Russian filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit’s “The Three Sisters” feels like the most bare-bones short of the bunch, with no dialogue and one fixed location, a small island that looks like something out of a “Far Side” cartoon.

But Bronzit finds whimsy in the tale of three sisters who live alone on the island, and whose isolated lives are upended when a burly sailor who looks like half Popeye and half Bluto rents a room on the isle. As the sisters compete for the old salt’s affections, the short becomes a delightful comedy of manners.

The last film of the bunch, “Forevergreen,” is probably the one that will appeal to kids the most. Disney veteran animators Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears spent five years creating a CGI film that looks like stop-motion animation, using chunky figures seemingly whittled out of wood to tell the story of a bear cub who is taken in by a kindly tree.

Unfortunately, after the emotional complexity of the other four films, I found “Forevergreen” to be treacly and sentimental (the relationship between the bear and the tree gave me big “Giving Tree” vibes – ugh.) I could easily see this appealing to Oscar voters because of its technical dazzle, but it’s my least favorite of the bunch.

The anthology is rounded out but one film that didn’t get nominated, Irish filmmaker Giovanni Ferrari’s “Eiru.” Coming from the same studio that created “The Secret of Kells” and “Wolfwalkers,” it’s a charming fantasy about a young girl who heads into a forbidding cave in search of her village’s missing water. The story feels a little rushed, as if this was a proof-of-concept short for a feature film.

“2026 Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts” are now playing in theaters. In Madison, they will play March 4 and 5 and March 11 and 12 at Marcus Point and Marcus Palace.