Special Event: Academy Awards

Ceremony, scheduled for April 28 at the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, celebrates individuals and companies whose discoveries and innovations have contributed in significant and lasting ways to the motion picture industry.

The Oscar and BAFTA-winning Senior Animation Supervisor and Senior VFX Supervisor discuss their team’s groundbreaking animation and visual effects work, including the challenging Tsyong and Medusoid creatures, on the latest record-shattering ‘Avatar’ sequel, now in theaters.

Oscar nominees named this morning for Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Short share their reactions to the great news.

Academy members will vote to determine five nominees for best animated feature film award at the 99th Oscars; films also qualify for other categories including best picture.

The list of new AMPAS member invitees includes 41 in Animation, 25 in Visual Effects, 29 in Production Design, and 25 in Production and Technology.

For 98^th Oscars, members must now watch all nominated films in a category in order to vote in final award round; each branch will judge films based on the ‘degree to which a human was at the heart of the creative authorship.’

In an upset win, Gints Zilbalodis’ animated tale of a cat who wakes up to a world invaded by water took home the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, while the second chapter in Denis Villeneuve’s sci-fi epic won for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Design on a night that also saw Iranian filmmakers Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi, with visas approved just yesterday, arrive in the U.S. in time to win Best Animated Short for ‘In the Shadow of the Cypress.’

Iranian filmmakers Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani talk about their hand-drawn, deeply personal film, created under extreme political and financial hardship, about a captain suffering from PTSD who lives with his daughter, wants to be a caring father, but struggles with a harsh life.