Recently added to the shortlist of Oscar nominations for Best Animated Short, writer-director Trevor Jimenez's Weekends will compete against nine other contenders for the chance to bring home an Academy Award. Weekends already has a good awards run coming into the competition since it is a recent Annie Award nominee, winner of both the Special Jury Prize and Audience Award at the Annecy International Animation Festival, and also won 31 major awards while screening at 83 worldwide festivals and counting. And today, we're happy to share an exclusive look at the short to see how the look of Jimenez's very personal idea ultimately came together.

Weekends is the story of a young boy shuffling between the homes of his recently divorced parents. Surreal, dream-like moments mix with the domestic realities of a broken-up family in this hand-animated film set in the 1980s in Toronto. In our exclusive look behind the scenes of Weekends, viewers will see how Jimenez's idea grew in many ways through the collaboration with artist Chris Sasaki (Monsters University, Inside Out, Bao).

Take a look at our exclusive reveal of the Weekends featurette that teases just some of the artistic collaboration that went into bringing the short to life:

A behind the scenes look at how Chris Sasaki became involved in 'Weekends' and how he and Trevor Jimenez worked together to find the look of the film.

 

Interview footage shot by Erica Milsom

Other wins for Weekends include top prizes at the Warsaw Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival and Edmonton Int’l Film Festival, qualifying the film for Oscar submission four times over. Jimenez's own artwork has also be seen on the big screen in films as diverse as Rio, The Lorax, and Coco.

And for the full short film itself, check it out below:

weekends-poster