Irish animated short film Late Afternoon has been shortlisted for an Academy Award. The film, written and directed by Louise Bagnell, was made by the Kilkenny-based Cartoon Saloon. The announcement was revealed as part of the Oscar shortlists for nine categories, including best foreign film and best original song. The shortlisted titles will now go on to contest for an Oscar nomination.
Minister for Culture Josepha Madigan congratulated Bagnell and Cartoon Saloon. "Again Irish excellence is being recognised on a global scale – shortlisting and nomination for major international awards such as the Oscars is a great honour and demonstrates the strength and talent of the Irish film and animation industries," she said.
Late Afternnon addresses living with dementia as it follows an older woman who, disconnected from from the world around her, drifts through her memories of the past.
Cartoon Saloon's The Breadwinner, directed by Nora Twomey, received an Oscar nomination in 2018.
Oscars 2019 selected shortlists
Foreign Language Film
- Birds of Passage – Colombia
- The Guilty – Denmark
- Never Look Away – Germany
- Shoplifters – Kazakhstan
- Ayka – Japan
- Capernaum – Lebanon
- Roma – Mexica
- Cold War – Poland
- Burning – South Korea
Though most of this year's acclaimed foreign films, like Roma and Cold War, made the cut, many expected Belgium's Girl to at least appear on the shortlist: The film about a young dancer dealing with her gender transition, to be distributed by deep-pocketed Netflix, won several prizes at the Cannes Film Festival. Still, many trans critics have spoken out against the film, which was made by a cisgender director and is, in their opinion, exploitative and dangerous. It's telling that even though six of the foreign-language picks are decided by a group of Academy volunteers, and are then augmented by three picks chosen by an executive committee, none of those "saves" were spent on Girl.
Visual Effects
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Black Panther
- Christopher Robin
- First Man
- Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom
- Mary Poppins Returns
- Ready Player One
- Solo: A Star Wars Story
- Welcome to Marwen
One of this season’s primary questions is whether Black Panther can nab Marvel its first best picture nomination, but the visual effects category, which has proved far more hospitable to superhero movies, has three Marvel entries at the top of its shortlist. Still, Aquaman failed to make the cut, and this winter’s Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald missed out, too. Another snub: Paddington 2 was one of the most acclaimed films of the year, but the visual-effects branch, which failed to nominate this computer-generated bear the first time, remained unmoved.
Makeup and Hairstyling
- Black Panther
- Bohemian Rhapsody
- Border
- Mary Queen of Scots
- Stan & Ollie
- Suspiria
- Vice
The makeup and hairstyling branch were somewhat more discerning when it came to superhero entries: Only Black Panther made the list, and the countless characters of Avengers: Infinity War received a shrug. Voters were more taken with Rami Malek's fake Freddie Mercury teeth in Bohemian Rhapsody and Tilda Swinton's gender-bending Suspiria transformation.
Documentary Feature
- Charm City
- Communion
- Crime + Punishment
- Dark Money
- The Distant Barking of Dogs
- Free Solo
- Hale County This Morning, This Evening
- Minding the Gap
- Of Fathers and Sons
- On Her Shoulders
- RBG
- Shirkers
- The Silence of Others
- Three Identical Strangers
- Won't You Be My Neighbour?
In a huge year for documentary film, all of the top-performing docs made the shortlist: Won't You Be My Neighbour? about Mister Rogers; the Ruth Bader Ginsburg doc RBG; the twisty Three Identical Strangers; and the stunningly filmed Free Solo. Still, voters found no place for the long-delayed Aretha Franklin documentary, Amazing Grace, or Quincy, about Quincy Jones, who has been hobnobbing at many of this year's big award-season parties.
Original Song
- When a Cowboy Trades His Spurs For Wings, from The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- Treasure, from Beautiful Boy
- All the Stars, from Black Panther
- Revelation, from Boy Erased
- Girl in The Movies, from Dumplin
- We Won't Move, from The Hate U Give
- The Place Where Lost Things Go, from Mary Poppins Returns
- Trip a Little Light Fantastic, from Mary Poppins Returns
- Keep Reachin', from "Quincy
- I'll Fight, from RBG
- A Place Called Slaughter Race, from Ralph Breaks the Internet
- OYAHYTT, from Sorry to Bother You
- Shallow, from A Star Is Born
- Suspirium, from "Suspiria
- The Big Unknown, from Widows
Though as many as two songs can be nominated from a single film, many music-driven movies only submit one, so as not to split votes. That's an approach that appeared to work for Shallow, from A Star is Born, and All the Stars, from Black Panther, but it's worth noting that Mary Poppins Returns submitted two songs and, at least at this point, got both of them in. I'm tickled, too, that both the Coup and Thom Yorke made the shortlist for contributions to Sorry to Bother You and Suspiria, respectively. Should Yorke be nominated, he'll follow in the footsteps of his Radiohead bandmate Jonny Greenwood, nominated last year for composing the score for Phantom Thread.
Original Score
- Annihilation
- Avengers: Infinity War
- The Ballad of Buster Scruggs
- Black Panther
- BlacKkKlansman
- Crazy Rich Asians
- The Death of Stalin
- Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald
- First Man
- If Beale Street Could Talk
- Isle of Dogs
- Mary Poppins Returns
- A Quiet Place
- Ready Player One
- Vice
Though I’m still steamed that Nicholas Britell’s gorgeous score for If Beale Street Could Talk failed to snag a Golden Globe nomination, at least the Academy hasn’t yet made the same mistake: It’s represented on the short list, alongside scores from Black Panther and First Man. Missing here was the soundtrack for A Quiet Place, which does a lot of that horror movie’s heavy lifting.
Among the other shortlists announced Monday were the following – Documentary Short Subject: Black Sheep, End Game, Lifeboat, Los Comandos, My Dead Dad's Porno Tapes, A Night at the Garden, Period. End of Sentence., 63 Boycott, Women of the Gulag, Zion; Animated Short Film: Age of Sail, Animal Behaviour, Bao, Bilby, Bird Karma, Late Afternoon, Lost & Found, One Small Step, Pépé le morse, Weekends; Live Action Short Film: Caroline, Chuchotage, Detainment, Fauve, Icare, Marguerite, May Day, Mother, Skin, Wale. – New York Times
