“Spider-Man: Through the Spider-Verse” was the big winner of the 51st edition of the Annie awards, awarded annually by the International Society of Animated Film. Considered the “Oscars” of animated cinema, the Annie awards distinguish films and animated series from , in short and feature films. Reinforcing its favoritism at the Oscars, Sony's super superhero production received seven awards (all of its nominations), including Best Animated Film and Best Director, which brings together the Portuguese Joaquim dos Santos with Kemp Powers and Justin K. Thompson. With two awards were their biggest rivals,”The Boy and the Crane”, by the legendary Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki, which had seven nominations, and “Nimona”, by Nick Bruno and Troy Quane, released by Netflix, which led the race with nine nominations. Beating “Ernest & Célestine The Journey in Charabie”, “Four Souls of Coyote”, “Da Vinci: The Inventor” and “White Plastic Sky”, the Spanish and French animation without dialogues “Robot Dreams”, by Pablo Berger, about the friendship between a dog and a robot in New York in the 1980s, won only one of the five awards it competed for, but it was in its most important category: Best Independent Animated Film. Oscar-nominated “WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko”, won the award for animated short, a category won last year by the Portuguese production “Ice Merchants”. In the television categories, “Blue Eye Samurai” (Netflix), received six of the seven categories where it competed. There were also three awards for “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur” (Disney+) and two for “Star Wars: Visions” (Disney+). Awards were given in 37 film, TV and video game categories during the ceremony that took place at Saturday night in Los Angeles. Although”Robot Dreams” is also nominated for the Oscars, as are “The Boy and the Crane”, “Nimona” and “Elemental”, which reinforced its status as the big favorite for the golden statuette, for Best Animated Feature Film at the March 10 ceremony was “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”: the choices between the organizations coincided 15 times out of 23, including with the first “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”, by 2018. Strangely, due to Academy rules, Joaquim dos Santos is not on the list of nominees, despite being the first director associated with the project: only directors Ken Powers and Justin K. Thompson, and producers Phil Lord, appear. Chris Miller and Amy Pascal.According to a report from Variety on January 30, the omission of the Portuguese is the consequence of an “arbitrary rule” by the Academy that allows only four 'teams' of nominees to be recognized in the category.Describe the rules : “The nominee(s) for the award will be designated by those responsible for producing the film. The designated nominee(s) should be the creative individual(s) most clearly responsible for the overall production. There is a maximum of FOUR designated nominees, one of whom must be the credited director who exercised directing control, and the other(s) must have director or producer credit. In determining the number of producers eligible for nomination, a genuine team of no more than two people will be considered a single “producer” if the two individuals have an established production partnership, as determined by the Producers Union Production Partnership panel.” .When filling out the official form to submit the film's nomination to the Academy, the studio Sony Pictures and the team of filmmakers tried unsuccessfully to obtain an exception from the animation branch to include the three directors or present them as a 'team'. ', which left it up to the filmmakers to decide who was left out.
"Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" and Portuguese Joaquim dos Santos win Annie awards, the "Animation Oscars"
