On March 3, Beijing time, the 97th Academy Awards ceremony was announced, and the Latvian, French and Belgian co-produced animated film "Life of Cats" won the Best Animated Feature Film Award. Coincidentally, this "darling" of the international film scene has just been released in mainland China, but the Oscars' blessing has not changed the film's "difficult survival" in theaters. Since its release on February 28, the film's cumulative box office in four days has been less than 7 million yuan, and a third-party platform predicts that its total box office will stop at 10.59 million yuan.
Poster of "Cat's Fantasy Adventure"
The film tells the story of a cat who, in a flood-ravaged doomsday world, jumps onto a sailboat carrying different species and forms a drifting team with a capybara, a vigilant lemur, a loyal dog, and a guardian secretary bird. This "Noah's Ark"-style adventure reconstructs the plight of human civilization from an animal perspective. Director Jinzi Zibarodis subverts the traditional animation paradigm with extreme aesthetic experiments. The entire film abandons human language and conveys emotions through body language, environmental sound effects, and changes in light and shadow. The eye contact of the fox when cleaning up expired food and the slow-motion shot of the feathers falling when the secretary bird breaks its wings all use "visual montage" to achieve empathy beyond language.
In the 118-minute narrative, the relationship between the characters has gone through three dramatic cycles of "falling into the water and rebirth": from the lemur's conflict with the team to protect the sequins he collected, to the secretary bird's broken wings to protect its companions; from the black cat's monopoly of food to learning to share, and finally the team broke through the boundaries of species to form a community of shared destiny. This transformation from "the law of the jungle" to "symbiotic philosophy" deconstructs the cultural collision and the essence of human nature in the context of globalization with animal fables, and under the guise of cute pets, it directly faces the ultimate question of the survival of civilization.
Stills from "Cat's Fantasy Adventure"
Since its premiere at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, "Cat Life" has won more than 100 international awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film and the Annie Award for Best Independent Animated Feature Film. In the form of no dialogue, 40,000 frames of hand-painted watercolor images and symphonic music are used to construct the beautiful artistic conception of the Nordic snowfield.
Combined with the performance of the past Oscar-winning animated feature films in the Chinese market, the box office "cold scene" of "Cat Life" is not isolated, but it is indeed particularly deserted. The 2017 Oscar-winning animated feature "Zootopia" had a box office of over 1.5 billion in China, becoming a phenomenal hit; the 2018 Oscar-winning animated feature "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" had a box office of 427 million in China. These works, which have Hollywood genes and are more entertaining, are obviously more in line with the preferences of domestic audiences and the traditional audience positioning of animation family fun. Author-oriented works rely more on the audience's perception of the director's popularity. For example, "How Do You Want to Live" directed by Hayao Miyazaki, who won the Oscar in 2024, earned nearly 800 million yuan at the box office, and "Isle of Dogs", nominated for the best animation in 2018, also had a box office of over 40 million thanks to the popularity and influence of director Wes Anderson.
In comparison, the box office performance of "Cat Life" in mainland China is in sharp contrast to its award halo: the average number of audience members on the first day was less than 10, and the average number of audience members on subsequent days was less than 3. Compared with the box office explosion of the domestic animation "Nezha: The Devil Boy Conquers the Dragon King" in the same period, the commercial performance of the highly acclaimed animation is particularly bleak.
Stills from "Cat's Fantasy Adventure"
Some analysts believe that the film has no dialogues and relies solely on visual language to drive the plot. Director Jinzi Zibarodis once explained that the original intention of the creation was to "let humans re-understand the world through the instinctive reactions of animals." Although it was praised by film critics as "an innovation in animation art," it is undeniable that the experimental approach has become a barrier for some viewers. Without dialogue, the emotional transmission seems obscure. In addition, animals such as capybaras, secretary vultures, and lemurs that appear in the film have strong symbolic meanings in Western culture, but are slightly unfamiliar to Chinese audiences. Although the themes explored in the film are universal, they lack local cultural anchors and are difficult to inspire widespread empathy.
Although it is an animation, it is undeniable that the core of "Life of Cats" is an art film. This kind of slow-paced work that emphasizes philosophy and visual aesthetics is difficult to attract mainstream family audiences, and this group is currently the basic audience of animation. Although the Oscar award is a "stepping stone", without localized operations and precise audience positioning, it is still difficult for excellent works to break through the circle.
Another objective reason is that the recent "Nezha fever" in cinemas is still continuing, leaving very limited space for new films. Other films released in the same period are also award-winning works of major film festivals, such as "The Kitchen", "Preliminary Evidence" and "The Color of You", which have diverted art film audiences.
Previously, there were media reports that as of February 2025, the global box office of "Cat Life" has exceeded 20 million US dollars. The film's box office ranking in mainland China has slightly improved after winning the award. From the stable seventh place in the past few days, on March 4, it ranked fifth, and the box office output exceeded "Fengshen II" and "The Way of the Weird Talent".
Stills from "Cat's Fantasy Adventure"
