New Spike Lee short takes top prize; ‘Beyond Words’ and ‘18 Months’ also awarded; Production Sessions lineup to feature Wētā FX, Lightstorm, NASA, Pixar, ILM, and Google DeepMind.
SIGGRAPH 2026 has named Apart, Beyond Words, and 18 Months as the 3 winning films of its Computer Animation Festival. The conference also announced its Production Sessions lineup featuring behind-the-scenes presentations on Avatar: Fire and Ash, Artemis II, Hoppers, The Mandalorian and Grogu, and Dear Upstairs Neighbors.
The conference, which takes place July 19-23 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, will spotlight animated storytelling and the studios shaping major productions through the Computer Animation Festival and Production Sessions programs.
The Computer Animation Festival, SIGGRAPH’s animation showcase and an Academy Award-qualifying festival for its “Best in Show” short film, expanded eligibility this year to include films longer than 10 minutes. Marina Antunes, SIGGRAPH 2026 Computer Animation Festival director, said the change “helped us in reaching out to films and filmmakers that probably would not have submitted in previous years.”
Apart, directed by Pola Maneli and produced by Social Popcorn Films, won “Best in Show.” Set in apartheid South Africa, the South Africa and U.S. production follows a forbidden friendship between two boys tested by a life-saving act that forces them to confront the hate dividing their world. Written by Spike Lee and created by a team rooted in South African culture and history, the film blends traditional 2D frame-to-frame animation, cut-out animation, 3D, and 2.5D across roughly 18,000 frames crafted by more than 250 artists. Take a few minutes to read AWN’s recent interview Maneli: Pola Maneli: From Poster Illustrator to Director of ‘Apart’
Beyond Words, from Antoine Barbannaud, Théo Merlet, Cyril Buisson, Damien Poncelet, Anthonin Haüy, Timothé Vergught, Mathis De Sauvecanne, Thémys Cheynel, Lilou Tiprez, Leandro Leijnen, and Romain Gueusset with Creative Seeds, won Best Student Project. Set in a Viking world, the French student film follows a girl whose mother goes to battle after her husband’s death, as the emotions created by that distance haunt them as mysterious wolves appear. The film was built on the team’s proprietary “Hunter” pipeline with in-house motion capture and includes more than 130 shots featuring fur and cloth simulation and complex facial animation across six hand-modeled characters.
18 Months, from Paulo Garcia and Natalia Gouvea, received the Jury’s Choice award. Based on a true story, the U.S. production follows Danny and Pete after they find a newborn in a subway station, and retells their adoption journey to mirror the stages of pregnancy, challenging traditional definitions of what it takes to build a family. The film was made in stop-motion using handmade puppets and sets, with minimal software use for editing and cleanup.
“Stories about how the past shapes the present and our future were really at the forefront this year, with filmmakers exploring social justice, inclusivity, and environmental stories,” Antunes said. “They are using the past as a starting point, looking back not to forget what has come before, but to shape what is happening now and what is coming in the future. The Computer Animation Festival consistently sets the bar for where technology and creativity converge, so you are guaranteed to see the best of the best.”
The Computer Animation Festival includes screenings of the Electronic Theater and Animation Theater, giving attendees multiple ways to experience emerging animation trends from around the world. Several top films will also be featured in the SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival Traveling Show, a touring collection that brings the Electronic Theater to campuses, festivals, and communities worldwide.
The Production Sessions program will offer behind-the-scenes looks at films, immersive experiences, and scientific visualization projects. In “Wētā FX Presents: Avatar: Fire and Ash,” Wētā FX and Lightstorm Entertainment will examine more than 3,100 shots created for the return to Pandora, including the blending of extensive native stereo photography with fully digital, performance-captured characters.
The Wētā FX and Lightstorm Entertainment session will also cover how the team handcrafted elements of the world, including creatures, clans, and the film’s titular fire, created in Kora, a new addition to Wētā FX’s global simulation framework, Loki. The team created more than 2,500 facial motion shots for 30 speaking characters using a proprietary facial system designed to preserve each actor’s performance.
Additional Production Sessions include “Visualizing the Moon for Artemis II,” in which NASA shows how cinematic scientific visualization built from publicly available datasets and high-end 3D rendering recreates the exact lighting astronauts will encounter on the far side of the Moon. The work has helped plan observations and train the Artemis II crew for the first crewed flight to the Moon since Apollo 17.
Pixar Animation Studios will present “We’re All In This Together: The Making of Disney and Pixar’s Hoppers,” focusing on the cross-departmental pipeline that allowed physical simulation and artistically directed stylization to coexist in every shot while balancing broad comedy, suspense, and the beauty of nature photography.
Industrial Light & Magic will present “Bringing The Mandalorian and Grogu to Life: Virtual Production, Creatures, and VFX Innovations,” detailing how real-time technology, virtual production workflows, and established visual effects techniques were used to bring the latest Star Wars feature to the big screen.
Google DeepMind animation veterans and researchers will present “Dear Upstairs Neighbors: Artist-Centered, AI-Assisted Expressionistic Animation,” covering how artist-driven, AI-assisted workflows shaped an expressionistic, painterly short, with artists in control as both creators and co-designers throughout the process.
“Production Sessions cover the full production, from the very start of the concept art and the story all the way to the end, giving you a really great general view of the entire pipeline,” SIGGRAPH 2026 Production Sessions chair Valerie Bernard said. “We get to learn about so many creative challenges that teams had to solve by getting multiple departments to work together. They are for everyone. When I first started going to SIGGRAPH, I learned the most about production workflows from Production Sessions, and they are just as amazing for veterans of the industry who like to be reminded why we do this job.”
SIGGRAPH 2026 is the 53rd annual conference hosted by ACM SIGGRAPH. ACM, the Association for Computing Machinery, is an educational and scientific computing society, and ACM SIGGRAPH is its special interest group focused on research, technology, and applications in computer graphics and interactive techniques.
Source: SIGGRAPH 2026
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
