Politically concerned movie Zootopia wins Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film

March 1, 2017

On Sunday, Disney's  won the Oscars award for the Best Animated Feature Film at the 89th ceremony held at Los Angeles. Pixar's animated short  won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film and Disney's won for  Visual Effects.

Others competing with Zootopia in the category were ', ', ', and Disney's '. This was the first Oscar for directors and  who were previously nominated for, respectively, ' and '.

In the acceptance speech, director said, "About five years ago, almost six now, [...] we got this crazy idea of talking about humanity with talking animals in the hopes that, when the film came out, it would make the world just a slightly better place." The Disney movie addresses several social problems such as racism, sexism, prejudice, stereotyping, and fear. The New York Times said the parental guidance (PG) rated movie was "Funny, smart, thought-provoking — and musical, too."

Before announcing the award, Mexican actor said, "As a Mexican, as a Latin-American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I'm against any form of wall that wants to separate us." The movie was released in March, during the 2016 US presidential race.

In an interview with Variety, the directors of Zootopia said movies about bias and discrimination haven't been Disney's main focus, but during its production, "Things were not great in the world. [...] It was more like we had our finger on something important right now and we really need to do our best to portray this as honestly as we can. Then with the election and the campaign, the real move towards governing by fear [...] I don't think we could have predicted it any closer with this film."

With this win, the Walt Disney Company has won nine out of ten Best Animated Feature Film Oscars in the last decade, with Pixar Animation Studio winning six out of them. Zootopia also won Best Animated Film at the and the.