Shades of reality and fantasy

This year's nominated shorts put imaginative spins on real-world themes

- Story by Michael Ordoña

THE 2026 OSCAR-NOMINATED ANIMATED shorts mix the past and the present, fable and nonfiction. Some even look into the future, whether we like what they see or not.

1 ‘BUTTERFLY’

Florence Miailhe’s oil-painted memory play tells of Alfred Nakache, a French swimmer of Algerian Jewish descent who finished ahead of Nazi competitors at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, joined the Resistance and survived Auschwitz.

“When I first thought about the film, I thought about this old man swimming in the sea and then diving and there were bubbles of memories coming back to him,” says the César-winning Miailhe of the fluidity of time in her subject’s mind.

She’s not surprised the film’s themes – the rise of authoritarianism, the persecution of minorities – feel contemporary now: “When I started this, in 2015, there were the first signs that these types of things would come again,” she says. “What is really surprising is how fast it goes and how it feels like we are in a bad movie.”

Producer Ron Dyens says, though the film is primarily meant to honor Nakache, “Often, we do a movie to alert, to prevent. The National Front is growing in France.”

Still, says Dyens, we should remember Nakache’s last words in the movie, sending young pupils off to swim: “Go, little fish. We are not afraid.”

2 ‘FOREVERGREEN’