“Bear Story,” Oscar winner for best animated short (video)

 February 29, 2016 - 15:00 AMT

PanARMENIAN.Net - The gorgeous, wrenching “Bear Story” demands a view after its win on Sunday, February 28 for Best Animated Short, TheWrap said.

Readers of TheWrap have been up on Gabriel Osorio’s movie since it swept the Jury and Audience awards at the 2015 Shortlist Film Festival.

The short tells of a lonesome bear who builds an elaborate mechanical diorama in an attempt to remember (and perhaps recover) the life he used to live with his wife and son before he was ripped from his home and sent to a circus.

Audiences in Osorio’s native Chile immediately know the film is an allegory for the way families were torn apart during the murderous Pinochet regime during the 1970s.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to get this message through,” Osorio said in the Oscars press room following his historic victory. “The importance of family, that the family must be together and cannot be separated for any political reasons or for any other reason.

“For us it’s really great, it’s such an incredible opportunity,” the director continued.

Osorio previously told TheWrap that the idea was “mainly inspired by the story of my grandfather. He was exiled from Chile in the ’70s and spent 10 years in England — I knew that I had a grandfather, but I didn’t meet him when I was a kid.”