Who shared The Girl Who Cried Pearls' Animated Short Oscar with Chris Lavis?

Maciek Szczerbowski shared The Girl Who Cried Pearls’ Animated Short Oscar with Chris Lavis. Their Canadian stop-motion film won Best Animated Short Film at the 98th Academy Awards.

Szczerbowski and Lavis wrote and directed the 2025 film, produced through the National Film Board of Canada. It follows a poor boy in early-20th-century Montreal who falls in love with a girl whose tears supposedly become pearls. He sells the pearls to a ruthless pawnbroker, and the story ultimately questions whether value comes from an object or from the story attached to it.

The film’s visual style comes from handmade stop-motion puppets and miniature sets. Its inspiration reportedly began during production of the duo’s earlier short Madame Tutli-Putli, when a necklace prop broke and scattered pearls across the set.

A frequent mix-up is identifying one director as the sole winner. Lavis and Szczerbowski are a long-running creative partnership; they had already received an Oscar nomination for Madame Tutli-Putli in 2007.