SIGGRAPH 2026 Computer Animation Festival Reveals Winners, Including Best in Show "Apart"

SIGGRAPH 2026, taking place 19–23 July in Los Angeles under Festival Director Marina Antunes, has announced the winners of its Computer Animation Festival. Best in Show goes to "Apart," a South African–American co-production written by Spike Lee and directed by Pola Maneli of Social Popcorn Films. The film blends traditional 2D frame-to-frame, cut-out, 3D, and 2.5D animation across roughly 18,000 frames produced by a team of more than 250 creatives, telling the story of a forbidden friendship in apartheid South Africa.

The Best Student Project award goes to "Beyond Words," a French student production built on the team's proprietary "Hunter" motion-capture pipeline, featuring over 130 shots with fur and cloth simulation and complex facial animation across six hand-modeled characters. The Jury's Choice award went to "18 Months," a stop-motion film by Paulo Garcia and Natalia Gouvea about a same-sex couple's adoption journey. A trailer previewing the full festival program is now available.