Portuguese film ″Ice Merchants″ wins Annie Award for Best Short Film

The film “Ice Merchants”, by Portuguese director João Gonzalez, won the Annie award, the Oscar for animation, in the category of Best Short Film, with “Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro”, from Netflix, being distinguished as Best Film.

The 50th Annie Awards ceremony, the most important in animation cinema in the United States, took place on Saturday night (dawn today in Europe) in Los Angeles, California, and also distinguished “Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro” in the categories for Best Character Animation, Best Direction, Best Music and Best Production Design.

“Ice Merchants” was nominated in the category of Best Short Film alongside “Amok”, by Hungarian Balázs Turai, “Black Slide”, by Israeli Uri Lotan, “Love, Dad”, by Czech Diana Cam Van Nguyen, and ” The Flying Sailor”, by Canadians Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby.

João Gonzalez’s film is also in the running for the Oscars, to be delivered on March 12, nominated for best animated short film, in an unprecedented nomination for a Portuguese production.

“Ice Merchants”, João Gonzalez’s third film, is about loss and family ties, between a father and a son, and has as its starting point the image of a house on a mountain, perched on a precipice.

This short film, told without a narrator or dialogues, just drawn images and music, is co-produced by Cola Animation with the United Kingdom and France.

“Ice Merchants” had its world premiere in 2022 at the Cannes Critics’ Week in France, where it was awarded. Since then, it has added several other awards in the context of festivals.

The film is currently showing in Portuguese cinemas.

Considered the ‘Oscars’ of animation cinema, the Annie Awards distinguish animation productions, in short and feature films, and are awarded annually by the International Society of Animated Cinema.

In the category of Best Film, in addition to the winner “Pinocchio de Guillermo del Toro”, were nominated “Turning Red – Strange Red”, from Pixar studios, “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”, from Dreamworks, “The Sea Beast,” for Netflix, and “Wendell & Wild,” a Monkeypaw and Gotham production for Netflix.

Among the winners in the 32 categories of the 50th edition of the Annie Awards are “Marcel the Shell with Shoes On” (Marcel the Movie LLC) for Best Independent Film and “The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse” (NoneMore and Bad Robot) for Best Special Production.