This is the fourth year where we’ve shared a selection of animated shorts for International Women’s Day, and it still feels like we’re barely dipping our toes into the waters here. The history of animation is a history of incredibly talented women making their mark on the medium—a fact made clear by the incredible resource that is Heather Kai Smith’s Great Women Animators site—and the only reason this post isn’t double or triple its current length is that we want to keep things at least somewhat manageable.

What follows here is a list, in alphabetical order by filmmaker, of animated shorts that Quickdraw added to our Indie Animation Mixtape Vimeo channel or wrote about in our Monday Shorts blog series in the past year. And even then, it isn’t all of them—we’ve kept it to a fairly manageable 40 films, all of which moved us, made us laugh, helped us feel connected,and otherwise added some wonder to a challenging year. Some of them are brand new; others are a few years (or even a few decades) old. But all of them are worth celebrating.

Two quick notes before getting to the films: First, if you missed our past lists, you can still browse through our 2018, 2019, and 2020 entries. Second, if we’ve misgendered any filmmakers, please send us a note and we’ll correct it as soon as we can.

And without further ado, happy International Women’s Day!