With Cartoon Saloon up for an Oscar at tomorrow’s Academy Awards, we revisit our recent interview with director Tomm Moore. 

GETTING AN OSCAR nomination is a dream of many filmmakers – but to a filmmaker in Ireland, it might seem like something that’s almost impossible to get. 

And yet, Ireland has had a number of Oscar-nominated films, with the 1990s in particular being a fertile time for the country’s filmmaking. In recent years, director Lenny Abrahamson’s 2015 film Room won the Best Actress award for its star Brie Larson.

Cartoon Saloon, a Kilkenny-based Irish animation studio, is no stranger to the Oscars – it has had four animated feature films and one short film receive nominations. Tomorrow night it’s up for its fifth Oscar for its latest film, Wolfwalkers.

But how do you even get to that stage?

To find out more about how the studio has made films worthy of an Oscar nomination, we spoke to the co-director of Wolfwalkers, Tomm Moore (the other director is Ross Stewart). 

He talks us through how Cartoon Saloon started; the work it does; what it’s like to go to the Oscars, and more. 

Source: The Explainer/SoundCloud

This episode was put together by presenter Sinéad O’Carroll, producers Aoife Barry and Nicky Ryan.