The Academy of Motion Picture Arts released their list for the contenders for Best Animated Feature. These nineteen films, some that are familiar and some that aren’t, will compete to make the cut for the five films that will make it to the actual Academy Awards Ceremony. Then, the winner will be selected out of those five.
From the source article, here are the films:
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2
The Croods
Despicable Me 2
Epic
Ernest and Celestine
The Fake
Free Birds
Frozen
Khumba
The Legend of Sarila
A Letter to Momo
Monsters University
O Apostolo
Planes
Puella Magi Madoka Magica the Movie — Rebellion
Rio: 2096 A Story of Love and Fury
The Smurfs 2
Turbo
The Wind Rises
Not all of them may be ones you’ve heard of, but since I’m actually excited about some of the more obscure ones. I would rather see The Wind Rises beat for a spot than the atrocious movie Planes or Smurfs 2…but enough about that! You will also see that the big Pixar and Dreamworks Films, The Croods and Frozen are on there. Frozen has not been released yet, but it will be in time for the Academy Awards come early next year. I will have to see it for myself to determine how it measures up against the other films, but I have a good feeling about it.
Another thing about this list is that not all films submitted qualify for the Academy’s expectations. Smurfs 2 is not 75% animation and has a LOT of live action, so it probably won’t qualify. If Smurfs and several others don’t qualify, we won’t get 5 films to make it to the Awards.
The number of movies nominated in the animated feature category is dependent on how many films qualify for Oscar consideration: If at least 16 films qualify, the category will have five films; if fewer than 16 qualify, the number of nominees drops to 3.
It was a tough year for animation, but I sure hope that doesn’t happen.
Inspir-Animation 
I want The Legend of Sarila to win it all. That was a surprisingly good movie.