On September 14 local time, the 53rd Student Academy Awards ceremony was held during the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) at the TIFF Lightbox venue. The animated short film Gauze, co-directed by Yue Yulin and Ma Xinyue, graduates of the School of Animation and Digital Art at Communication University of China, won the Bronze Medal in the Animation category. This honor is an important achievement of the school's internationalized talent cultivation in animation, fully demonstrating students' artistic creativity and international competitiveness.
▲Yue Yulin attended the awards ceremony on behalf of the creative team
Award Background
The Student Academy Awards were founded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 1972, dedicated to providing a professional platform for global emerging filmmakers to showcase their works and connect with the industry. The awards include multiple categories such as Animation, Documentary, Narrative, and Alternative/Experimental Film, and call for original student works from universities worldwide. Renowned global filmmakers such as Pete Docter, Robert Zemeckis, and Spike Lee are all past winners of this award. This year's competition received 2,972 entries from 894 universities worldwide. After multiple rounds of professional review by members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 16 winning students were ultimately selected. According to the competition rules, all Student Academy Award-winning films automatically qualify for consideration in the corresponding short film categories of the 99th Academy Awards.
Work Introduction
The animated short film Gauze was co-directed by five creators: Noran Fikri Alezabi, Nicholas Arujah, Ma Xinyue, Yue Yulin, and Zhou Xiaonan. All five are 2025 graduates of GOBELINS Paris. The film's story focuses on Zain, a 14-year-old Palestinian boy, telling how he bears the burden of caring for his younger brother alone in an environment of war and famine; when humanitarian aid supplies fall into the sea, Zain jumps into the water again. Swimming is no longer out of passion, but a helpless choice for survival. The work uses the fate of an individual youth to reflect heavy humanitarian issues, conveying profound humanistic reflection through the medium of animation.
The work has a rich record at international festivals. It was shortlisted for the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, won important international awards such as the BAFTA Student Film Award and the Student Academy Award Bronze Medal; it also won multiple international festival awards including the Spark Animation Student Film Award, the Tournus Animated Film Festival Youth Award, the Animayo Award for Most Emotional Impact, and the FICAM Meknes International Animation Film Festival Best Student Film. It has also completed official screenings at dozens of international animation film festivals worldwide, receiving widespread recognition from industry at home and abroad.
Yue Yulin is a graduate of the 2019 undergraduate cohort of the School of Animation and Digital Art at Communication University of China, and a 2025 graduate of the Master's program in Character Animation at GOBELINS Paris. During her undergraduate studies, her directed works won numerous professional awards at home and abroad. Works such as Xiaoyu Yi and Youyou Xiari Chang won honors including the Toronto Animation Arts Festival International (TAAFI) and the China International Cartoon & Animation Festival "Golden Monkey King Award", and were shortlisted multiple times for renowned international animation festivals, demonstrating a solid creative foundation. In the creation of Gauze, she participated in the entire project, responsible for core work including character design, concept design, animation supervision, animation production, and scriptwriting.
Ma Xinyue is a graduate of the 2018 undergraduate cohort of the School of Animation and Digital Art at Communication University of China, and a 2025 graduate of the Master's program in Character Animation at GOBELINS Paris. During her studies, she focused on 2D and 3D animation and storyboard design. Her core works Elegy of the Elephant Herd and Sea Heart Adventure won multiple international awards including the Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film and the Chicago International Children's Film Festival, with rich experience in competitions. In the Gauze project, she was mainly responsible for key creative work including storyboarding, film editing, background layout, animation production, 3D assistance, and post-production compositing.
For a long time, the School of Animation and Digital Art at Communication University of China has focused on consolidating students' professional fundamentals while emphasizing the cultivation of humanistic literacy, guiding students to be grounded in reality and concerned with common human themes, and encouraging students to participate in international creative practice and engage with international competition platforms. In the future, the school will continue to advance the connotative development of the animation discipline, expand channels for international creative exchange, support more young animation creators, convey humanistic warmth through the medium of animation, and let the creative voice of Chinese youth be heard on the international stage.
This article was translated with AI assistance.
Editor: Fang Yiran
