Which film won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature? Shrek won it. The DreamWorks film received the award at the 74th Academy Awards, honoring movies released in 2001. It was the first year the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented a competitive Oscar specifically for animated feature films.
Directed by Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson, Shrek became a landmark for combining fairy-tale parody, computer animation, and pop-culture humor. Its win was especially notable because it defeated Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. and Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, both major animated releases of the same year.
A common mix-up is Toy Story, which was the first feature-length computer-animated film and helped transform the industry, but it came out before this Oscar category existed. The Lion King and Finding Nemo were also influential animated films, yet neither could have won the inaugural award because they were released in different years. Shrek’s victory established the category that has since recognized films from Pixar, Disney, Studio Ghibli, DreamWorks, and other animation studios.