Song of the Sea

Tomm Moore's Song of the Sea is the second film in his Irish-folklore trilogy at Cartoon Saloon, the Kilkenny animation studio he co-founded in 1999 with Paul Young and Nora Twomey. It came after The Secret of Kells (2009) and before Wolfwalkers (2020), and between them the three films gave the studio an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature for every Irish-mythology release it made in the 2010s.

It won the European Film Award for Best Animated Feature in 2014 and was nominated for the Oscar at the 87th Academy Awards in 2015, where it lost to Disney's Big Hero 6. It also won the IFTA (Irish Film and Television Award) for Best Animated Film and was nominated for the Annie Award for Best Animated Feature.

The animation is hand-drawn 2D, flat and deliberately decorative, drawing on Celtic illuminated manuscripts and on Eyvind Earle's work for Disney's Sleeping Beauty. The French composer Bruno Coulais, who had also scored Coraline and The Secret of Kells, wrote the music, with songs performed by the Irish trad-folk group Kíla. Brendan Gleeson, Fionnula Flanagan and Lisa Hannigan are among the voices, and Hannigan sings much of the film's music. Few independent animation houses anywhere are now as admired as Cartoon Saloon, and this is the film that shows most clearly why.