Several Indians are rooting for Sanjay’s Super Team at the Oscars. Directed by Indian-origin animator Sanjay Patel and featuring Hindu gods, Sanjay’s Super Team has been nominated in the Short Film (Animated) category. But the competition is stiff, especially from Don Hertzfeldt’s acclaimed World of Tomorrow. Set in the distant future, using stick figures, and featuring voice work by his then four year-old niece, World of Tomorrow centres on an existential encounter between a young girl and her future cloned self.

Hertzfeldt’s animated short, Rejected, was previously nominated for the Academy Awards in 2000. The dark comedy comprises animated segments that have been rejected for telecast by a television network.

Also nominated is We Can’t Live Without Cosmos from Russian director Konstantin Bronzit. This is his second Academy Award nomination. Ubornaya istoriya - lyubovnaya istoriya (Lavatory Lovestory) was nominated in 2009 in the same category.

Richard Williams, the animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and film title sequence designer of such classics as The Pink Panther and What’s New Pussycat?, is also in the list of nominations with Prologue. Hand-drawn Greek gods engage in mortal combat in this short.

The fifth nomination is the first from Chile. Gabriel Osorio’s Bear Story explores cruelty, imprisonment, and the separation of families from one other. The film has been described as an allegory for the brutal reign of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet from the 1970s to the ’90s, which saw thousands of murders and disappearances, including Gabriel Osorio's grandfather.