Italy took center stage at this year’s edition of the Oscars, thanks to animation cinema. Credit goes to Marco Regina – the head of animation for The Windshield Wiper – who won a more-than-deserved award for the short, which he dedicated to love, the thread connecting all forms of human expression. But we must also thank Enrico Casarosa who, with Luca, was nominated for Best Animated Feature, after having been nominated once already, in 2011, for the animated short La Luna. 

Regina and Casarosa spearhead a creative sector that, in Italy, has been more and more innovative and lively, and supported by a growing and passionate public. What’s interesting is that while Casarosa – who is from Genoa – had to study at New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology because there weren’t many options to study animation in Italy back in the 1990s, the situation today is very different.