Dec 11, 2023

Pablo Berger's "Robot Dreams" Wins Best Animated Feature at the European Film Awards

Over the weekend, Pablo Berger's "Robot Dreams" won the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature Film, a major endorsement in the awards season. Of the last eight films to win this award, four have also been nominated for Oscars.

The film, adapted from Sarah Varon's graphic novel of the same name, is a colorful and lively portrait of New York City in the music-filled 1980s. In the film, Dog is tired of being alone and makes a robot companion; the two soon become best friends, but when circumstances beyond their control keep them apart, the two begin to dream of their next encounter.

The film won the Contrôle Champion competition in Annecy and a special jury prize at Animation is Film. In Spain, Robot Dreams won Best Film at the Sitges International Animated Film Festival over the live action category and was also nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Music and Best Editing at this year's Spanish Academy Goya Awards for Best Animated Feature Film.

Although "Robot's Dream" was a huge success at international film festivals, it is still not well known in the United States. However, it was picked up by independent distributor Neon at this year's Cannes Film Festival and is scheduled for release in 2024.

This year's European Film Award nominees for Best Animated Feature Film are:

The 2023 European Film Award for Best Short Film with mixed live action and animation went to Susanna Flock, Robin Krengel, Leonhard Müllner of Austria's Total Refusal and the machinima film Hardly Working, created by a team of artists including Michael Stumpf.

The film is a fly-on-the-wall style documentary about the lives of non-player characters (NPCs), using footage from the hit video game "Red Dead Redemption 2" to create a It is a depressing analogy. It is exceptionally rare for a Machinima film, defined as animated filmmaking within a real-time virtual 3D environment, to be recognized at a major awards ceremony.

This year's short film nominees include:

The European Visual Effects Award went to Felix Berges and Laura Pedro for their work on J. A. Bayona's "Society of the Snow," about a plane that crashed in the Andes Mountains in 1972.