Oscars 2020: Animation Wins for Toy Story 4 and Hair Love

10 February 2020 // News

Skwigly

Animation Magazine

The 92nd Academy Awards have announced their winners with Pixar’s Toy Story 4 taking the award for Animated Feature and Matthew A. Cherry’s Hair Love being awarded for Best Animated Short. The award for Visual Effects went to 1917.

Animated Feature winner Toy Story beat off competition from I Lost My Body, How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, Klaus, and Missing Link, with Pixar picking up their 10th Animated Feature Oscar; winning for the first time since 2018 with Coco. On accepting their award, Jonas Rivera, Josh Cooley, and Mark Nielsen said to “all of those who have grown up with the Pixar film franchise”:

Toy Story 4 is really a love letter to our families. This is for our parents, this is for our wives, this is for our kids. We want to thank the movie going audience so much – especially those that grew up with Toy Story – we hope your adventures with Buzz and Woody made growing up a little easier.

#Oscars Moment: See the winner for Best Animated Film: @Pixar‘s @ToyStory 4. pic.twitter.com/2xyTHyP0Yo

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 10, 2020

This year’s Animated Short Film category contained 3 stop-motion projects out of the 5 nominees – Dcera (Daughter), Memorable, and Sister – although it was 2D animated Hair Love – the story of an African American dad who must style his daughter’s hair for the first time – that came out on top. Kitball was the 5th nominee.

The winner had a large following of fans going into tonight’s awards; having raised $300,000 via Kickstarter in 2017, and then being released as a children’s book in 2019. Producer Karen Rupert Toliver, said:

There were so many filmmakers that worked so hard on this, and it was a labour of love. And it was because we have a firm belief that representation matters deeply, especially in cartoons. Because in cartoons that’s when we first see our movies and it’s how we shape our lives and think about how we see the world.

#Oscars Moment: Hair Love wins Best Animated Short Film! pic.twitter.com/LjInB0ejmy

— The Academy (@TheAcademy) February 10, 2020

Toliver told the press room: “Black hair is very close and personal to us, so freeing black hair is freeing ourselves. We want to be able to freely walk the streets – with our hair free. Now I’m in the entertainment industry where there’s less policing of hair, hopefully we can make social change.”

Having been picked up by Sony Pictures Animation, the full short film is available to watch online.

In this year’s poll, Skwigly readers didn’t quite pick the correct winners, instead opting for I Lost My Body (Animated Feature) and Daughter (Short Film).

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Watch the teams behind each of the nominated films discuss them at the Academy’s headquarters this past weekend:

Watch last week’s discussion with this year’s Animated Short Film nominees, hosted by director Vicky Jenson: