It's this year’s David versus Goliath story at the Oscars. Pixar, the global powerhouse behind the Toy Story franchise, and industrious Kilkenny indie studio Cartoon Saloon are both in the running for Best Animated Feature.

Pixar is the favourite to take the glittering prize for their latest movie Soul, while the Marble City will be hoping to be covered in Oscar glory on Sunday night for their superb film Wolfwalkers.

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They are very different movies, both thematically and in terms of production. Soul, made with a multi-million-dollar budget, is an existential odyssey about a New York jazz pianist who suddenly finds himself trapped in a strange land between Earth and the afterlife and it deals in some very Big Questions.

Wolfwalkers (budget: €10 million) is set in Kilkenny during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 17th century but it actually trades in issues of a far more tangible nature than Soul, such as the environment, the scars of history, and friendship against the odds.

"We're coming out of nowhere; we're in the middle of Ireland, we made a movie for €10 million and we're up against these huge $100 million movies from Pixar, who have a massive legacy behind them." - Tomm Moore of Cartoon Saloon

The film, which stars Irish newcomer Eva Whittaker, English actress Honor Kneafsey, and Sean Bean, tells the story of an English girl called Robyn Goodfellowe who travels to Ireland, where she befriends Mebh, a flame-haired changeling who lives in the local woods and leads a company of wolves.

Tomm Moore, Paul Young and Ross Stewart at the Wolfwalkers mural near the Medieval Mile Museum in Kilkenny

Soul is another super slick and hugely enjoyable computer-rendered Pixar production which invites admiration with its sumptuous look and feel but Wolfwalkers’ hand drawn and painterly 2D animation style invites you to dive in and join Robyn and Mebh on the headlong rush of their colourful forest adventure.

Soul may indeed take the Oscar but the sheer goodwill and love for Wolfwalkers is palpable and it may be worth staying up late - and howling at the moon - to see if it causes one of the few upsets expected at this year’s ceremony.

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"We wanted to hark back to the old Disney films we grew up with and a lot of the animated films in the last few years have been very contemporary." - Wolfwalkers co-director Ross Stewart

The film is the latest chapter in the remarkable worldwide success of Cartoon Saloon, who previously won plaudits and Oscar nods for their movies The Breadwinner, Song of the Sea, and The Secret of Kells, and one for Best Animated Short (Late Afternoon), and put Ireland on the map as a truly global force in animation.

Asked why Wolfwalkers has captured people’s imaginations and proved to be Cartoon Saloon’s most talked about and loved production yet, co-director Ross Stewart told RTÉ Entertainment that he thinks the film has chimed with viewers’ need for fantasy and escapism during the pandemic.

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"People are really excited to get away from the real world and being stuck at home," he said. "But also, there’s an old-world charm to it, like a fable or fairy-tale thing, and maybe that hasn’t been done in a long time now.

"We wanted to hark back to the old Disney films we grew up with and a lot of the animated films in the last few years have been very contemporary."

As Wolfwalkers co-director Tomm Moore remarked when he heard the film was in the running for a Bafta earlier this year, "I am surprised and delighted. I always feel it's amazing that we get nominated.

We round the nominees and potential winners for Oscar night

"We're coming out of nowhere; we're in the middle of Ireland, we made a movie for €10 million and we're up against these huge $100 million movies from Pixar, who have a massive legacy behind them."

As well as Soul, Wolfwalkers is also up against A Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon, Onward, and Over the Moon for that prized Oscar on Sunday night.

Mebh: leader of the pack

So, could it be fifth time lucky for Cartoon Saloon? Wolfwalkers has been called their best film to date - and their best chance of causing an upset.

That, however, is still a big ask. Since 2002, the winner of Best Animated Feature at the Annie Awards has gone on to the Oscar on 13 occasions. Soul received that Annie earlier this month, Wolfwalkers won Best Indie Feature.

Tradition says Soul but victory for Wolfwalkers on Sunday would become part of Academy Awards lore as one of the biggest surprises in big-screen history. "We'll give it a lash," was Moore's characteristically unfazed reaction to the nomination when he spoke to RTÉ Entertainment last month.

We’ll be keeping our fingers crossed for the Kilkenny cats and wolves. You could say Wolfwalkers has a lot of soul.

Alan Corr @CorrAlan2