Oscars: ‘Encanto’ Team Celebrates “Beautiful, Diverse Characters” With Best Animated Feature Win

Walt Disney Animation Studios‘ Colombian-set musical Encanto won the Academy Award for best animated feature, delivering Oscars to directors Byron Howard and Jared Bush, and producers Yvett Merino, the first Latina nominated and winning in the category, and Clark Spencer.

Merino said she was so proud to work on a film that “put beautiful, diverse characters front and center.” The team thanked the people of Colombia and the team at Disney Animation for their support.

It was the second Oscar for Howard and Walt Disney Animation Studios president Spencer, both of whom previously won the category in 2017 for Disney’s Zootopia.

The best animated feature category was first presented at the Academy Awards in 2002. Encanto marks the fourth win for Walt Disney Animation Studios, which also won Oscars for Frozen, Big Hero 6 and Zootopia. Combined with 11 wins from sister company Pixar, parent company Disney can now claim 15 best animated feature Oscars.

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Encanto was additionally nominated for original score for composer Germaine Franco, the first woman to score a Disney animated feature and the first Latina in the Academy’s music branch; and for original song for Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Dos Oruguitas,” which was also the first song he wrote in the Spanish language. (This was his second Oscar nomination, the first was for the song “How Far I’ll Go” from Disney’s Moana.) Miranda, who did not attend the ceremony after his wife tested positive for COVID-19, is an Oscar away from achieving EGOT status.

In the animated feature race, Encanto topped a field that also included Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon; Disney/Pixar’s Luca; Sony Pictures Animation and Netflix’s The Mitchells vs. the Machines; and Flee from Neon and Participant, which made Oscar history as the first movie nominated for best animated feature, best documentary and best international feature.