Every year, the Academy’s definition of what constitutes an “animated film” is put to the test. From “Waltz With Bashir” to “Marcel The Shell With Shoes On,” hybrid works have blurred the boundaries between animation, documentary, and live action. Now comes “Bouchra,” a vibrant and introspective collaboration between Moroccan artist-filmmakers Orian Barki and Meriem Bennani that recently played at the Toronto International and New York Film Festivals to positive reviews. The half-animated film may not have a qualifying release yet for the 98th Academy Awards, but if it did, could it sneak into Best Animated Feature?
At first glance, “Bouchra” doesn’t resemble a traditional animated Oscar contender. The film seamlessly blends live-action landscapes with anthropomorphic, animated characters, including its coyote protagonist, her friends, and her mother, as they navigate through real New York City and Casablanca settings. The animation, alternating between hand-drawn simplicity and fluid digital flourishes, isn’t just a stylistic choice; it’s the film’s beating heart, helping to give it its identity in a landscape where many animated titles can feel overly similar in tone, design, and feel.
Under current Academy rules, a film must feature “a significant number of animated major characters” and at least 75% of its running time must be animated to qualify for Best Animated Feature. Whether “Bouchra” meets that threshold would depend on the branch’s interpretation, but artistically, there’s little question that animation is central to its storytelling. The film’s most powerful emotional breakthroughs, between Bouchra and her mother as well as between art and identity, occur in sequences that merge pencil-drawn sketches, stick figures, and surreal character animation into a tapestry of memory and self-discovery.
Like Ari Folman’s “Waltz With Bashir” or “Flee,” Barki and Bennani use animation as a psychological device rather than a visual gimmick. Bouchra’s coyote form becomes a metaphor for self-representation, a way to reconcile queerness, diaspora, and creative expression in ways live action alone could not. Animation here functions as a mirror of the inner life, translating the intangible into visual poetry. Some may argue that depicting humans as animals adds very little. Yet, it becomes a mechanism for exploring the elasticity of memory and the blurred line between self and story. In “Bouchra,” animation isn’t about fantasy; it’s about escapism and emotional truth. From a technical standpoint, the film’s hand-drawn aesthetic, layered against real-world imagery, makes it a fascinating case study for the Academy’s animation branch, which has shown an increasing openness to experimentation. If “Marcel The Shell With Shoes On” could qualify in 2022, despite being mostly live action, there’s precedent for “Bouchra” to do the same. It would just need a qualifying release date.
So, for awards prospects, “Bouchra” faces an uphill climb. Its festival-circuit intimacy and avant-garde sensibility make it more of a critical darling than a mainstream contender. Yet these are the very works that redefine what animation can be, and the Academy’s increasingly international membership has shown a growing appreciation for such boundary-pushing artistry over the last few years in cases as recent as last year’s “Flow” winning the Oscar over major studio-backed films such as “The Wild Robot” and “Inside Out 2.” In an era when major studios dominate the category with polished spectacle, “Bouchra” reminds us of animation’s capacity for personal, deeply human storytelling. And in a race this fractured, with many contenders in flux, other than the extremely popular “Kpop Demon Hunters” and the unseen “Zootopia 2,” anything can still happen.
If the Oscars are truly meant to celebrate innovation in cinematic storytelling, then “Bouchra,” with its beauty, cross-medium experimentation, and emotional authenticity, has already won something far more important. However, if it can secure a qualifying release date, it can transition from being a critical darling to an awards underdog in a short period of time.
Have you caught “Bouchra” at any of the film festivals it’s played at yet? If so, what did you think of it? Do you think it can receive a qualifying release date and compete for Best Animated Feature this year? Please let us know in the comments section below and on Next Best Picture’s X account and check out the team’s latest Oscar predictions here.
