Nicolás Acevedo Ferraté at the Student Academy Awards ceremony last week in Toronto.
Photo credit: Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Guatemalan filmmaker and animator Nicolás Acevedo Ferraté has won the Gold Student Academy Award in Animation for Cows, alongside Jonathan Lally and Elio Molinaro. The awards were presented at the 53rd Student Academy Awards ceremony on September 14 at TIFF Lightbox during the Toronto International Film Festival.
Cows was created as a graduation film at France’s École Supérieure de Métiers Artistiques (ESMA) by Acevedo Ferraté, Valentin Brachet, Maxence Corriette, Tanguy Delepine, Eireen Failly, Lally, Molinaro, Yulia Nikitina, and Alexandre Verspuce, graduates of the school’s 3D Animation and Visual Effects program. The win marks the first Student Academy Award in ESMA’s history.
The animated short follows Moo Moo, a cow bored with life on her traditional farm who becomes fascinated by a gleaming high-tech farm across the road. Convinced that a better life awaits her there, she escapes, only to discover a far more troubling reality behind its seemingly idyllic exterior. Playing on the notion that the grass is always greener on the other side, the film explores freedom, disillusionment, and the pursuit of an idealized elsewhere.
The Academy named Acevedo Ferraté, Lally, and Molinaro as the Student Academy Award recipients for Cows. The film took Gold ahead of Matthias Strasser’s The Panic Inside from Germany’s Film Academy Baden-Württemberg, which received Silver, and Gauze by Noran Fikri Alezabi, Xinyue Ma, and Yulin Yue from France’s Gobelins, which received Bronze.
This year’s Student Academy Awards drew 2,972 entries from 894 colleges and universities around the world. The annual competition, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has previously recognized filmmakers including Patricia Cardoso, Pete Docter, Spike Lee, Patricia Riggen, and Robert Zemeckis.
The Gold win also puts Cows on the road to the Oscars: as a 2026 Student Academy Award winner, the film is now eligible for consideration in the Animated Short Film category at the 99th Academy Awards.
