“Animation Is Ready to Be Taken to the Next Step,” Says Guillermo del Toro as ‘Pinocchio’ Wins Animated Feature Oscar

“Animation is ready to be taken to the next step,” asserted Guillermo del Toro as his Pinocchio won at the 2023 Oscars for best animated feature on Sunday. “Animation is cinema, animation is not a genre. … Keep animation in the conversation.”

With the win, del Toro became the first filmmaker to win best picture, director and animated feature, while it delivered Netflix its first Oscar in the category.

The stop-motion adaptation of Carlo Collodi’s classic novel delvers del Toro his third Oscar, having previously won best picture and best director Academy Awards for his 2017 movie The Shape of Water.

It’s the first Academy Award for stop-motion vet Mark Gustafson, who directed alongside del Toro; producer Alexander Bulkley, a partner in animation production studio ShadowMachine; and del Toro’s longtime collaborator, producer Gary Ungar.

“It’s good to know that this art form that we love so much, stop-motion, is very much alive and well,” said Gustafson, accepting the award as he thanked ShadowMachine and The Jim Henson Company.

“This is an art form that has kept being kneecaped commercially and industrially and the kid’s table for so long,” del Toro said backstage, elaborating on his on-stage remarks about the state of animation. “And it really is a mature, expressive, beautiful, complex, art form. So a win helps, but it is about going forward as a community.” He asserted that taking animation to the next level also needs to involve dialog with the Guilds and the Academy. He related that he would “push this message” at the upcoming the Annecy International Animation Festival.

“It’s important that we keep this alive as an industry and an art form,” del Toro continued. “I have right now two scholarships active for filmmakers, and it is my desire and my commitment now to finance a stop-motion class [in Mexico].” 

Added the director: “It will help us give more movies in the community in Mexico and in Latin America, to keep pushing for stop motion, which is one of the most democratic forms of animation.  All the other forms of animation are too difficult or too expensive. But a kid can put a camera on the wall in their room, they can do animation in stop motion.”

This is only the second stop-motion animated movie to win the animated feature category, which was first presented in 2002. The first to win was 2005’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Since releasing its first original animated movie, 2018’s Klaus, Netflix has received at least one nomination in the feature animation Oscar category each year, but this is its first win.

This is also only the seventh time since the animated feature category was first presented in 2002 that the Oscar didn’t go to a movie from Disney Animation or Pixar.

At the 95th Academy Awards, Pinocchio topped a field that included A24’s Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, Dreamworks Animation and Universal’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Netflix’s The Sea Beast and Disney/Pixar’s Turning Red.

For more from the Academy Awards, see the star-studded Oscars red carpet arrivals.