'We don't want to be big.' How smaller companies are shaking up animation

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In nearly a quarter-century of the Oscars’ animated feature category, Disney or Pixar Studios has won 15 out of 24 times.But ahead of the awards’ 25th year, there’s been a significant shift.Disney/Pixar hasn’t won in three years, and last year’s win by “Flow” marked the first time an independent animated film emerged victorious.The 2026 nominations continued the trend: This is the second consecutive year two independent features — “Arco,” from production company Remembers, and “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain,” a co-production between Ikki Films and Maybe Movies — are in the race.

Both premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival, which their producers credit as a key part of their pathway to the Academy Awards.“For independent movies like ours, we must have a good festival career,” said Nidia Santiago, chief executive of Ikki Films and producer of “Little Amélie.” After Cannes, “Little Amélie” was acquired by GKIDS, and “Arco” was snapped up by Neon (which also has four of the five international feature contenders — all of them Cannes premieres).Both distributors have put together impressive campaigns that allowed two animated films with roughly $11-million budgets, or 10% of the reported budget for “KPop Demon Hunters,” to compete with the big guys.GKIDS successfully pushed for “Little Amélie” to compete in best feature at the Annie Awards for excellence in animation, a category typically reserved for major studios.

“They believed we can go in front of ‘KPop’ because we have a story to tell,” said Maybe Movies CEO and producer Henri Magalon.Awards The filmmakers behind the French animated sci-fi epic discuss the creation of two distinct futures for the story, one beset by fire and the other after the flood.Remembers was founded by Ugo Bienvenu and Félix de Givry in 2018.

Though “Arco” is their first fe...