# What is the best Oscar-winning animated short film?

> Ten-minute films that beat out everything else in the category for a statuette. Some are studio showpieces, some were made by two people and a pencil.

*By YPB Team · Published August 7, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-best-oscar-winning-animated-short-film*

---

## Current results (0 votes)

1. **Dear Basketball**
   Kobe Bryant's hand-drawn 2017 retirement letter, animated by Glen Keane and scored by John Williams.
2. **The Wrong Trousers**
   Nick Park's 1993 Wallace and Gromit caper with a penguin thief and robotic trousers.
3. **A Close Shave**
   The 1995 Wallace and Gromit short about sheep rustling, wool and a dog named Preston.
4. **Geri's Game**
   Pixar's 1997 short about an old man playing chess against himself in an empty park.
5. **Paperman**
   Disney's 2012 black-and-white short mixing hand-drawn and CG animation in a paper-plane romance.
6. **Bao**
   Domee Shi's 2018 Pixar short about a Chinese-Canadian mother and a dumpling that comes to life.
7. **Hair Love**
   Matthew A. Cherry's 2019 short about a Black father learning to style his daughter's hair.
8. **For the Birds**
   Pixar's 2000 short about a flock of snooty small birds and one oversized newcomer on a wire.
9. **Tin Toy**
   Pixar's 1988 breakthrough, the first CG film to win the Oscar, told from a wind-up toy's view.
10. **The Old Man and the Sea**
   Aleksandr Petrov's 1999 paint-on-glass adaptation of the Hemingway novella, made for IMAX.
11. **The Man Who Planted Trees**
   Frederic Back's 1987 half-hour pencil-crayon epic about one shepherd reforesting a valley.
12. **Father and Daughter**
   Michael Dudok de Wit's 2000 wordless short about a girl returning to a shoreline for a lifetime.
13. **Logorama**
   The 2009 French short staging a Los Angeles disaster movie entirely out of corporate logos.
14. **Feast**
   Disney's 2014 short following a romance through the eyes and dinner bowl of a Boston terrier.
15. **Bear Story**
   Chile's 2015 winner, a mechanical diorama that retells a bear's separation under dictatorship.
16. **Piper**
   Pixar's 2016 photoreal short about a sandpiper chick learning to face the surf.
17. **Mr. Hublot**
   Luxembourg's 2013 steampunk short about an obsessive recluse who adopts a robot dog.
18. **If Anything Happens I Love You**
   The 2020 Netflix short using shadow figures to trace two parents grieving a school shooting.
19. **The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse**
   The 2022 hand-drawn adaptation of Charlie Mackesy's illustrated book about kindness.
20. **Balance**
   The Lauenstein brothers' 1989 stop-motion parable of five men sharing a tilting platform.

Tags: movies, animation, all-time, oscars, short films