By: Catalina Pérez de Armiñán
On November 3rd, 2021, Encanto premiered at El Capital theater in Los Angeles. The computer-animated musical comedy follows a multigenerational Colombian family, the Madrigals, whose children and grandchildren—except for Mirabel Madrigal —receive magical gifts from a miracle that helps them serve the people in their rural community called the Encanto. When Mirabel learns that the family is losing their magic, she sets out to find out what is happening, and save her family and their magical house. The film was released in Canada and the United States on November 4, 2021, and shortly after made it to Disney+. It became an immediate success and a giant step towards Latinx inclusion in Hollywood.
The music in the Encanto album, by Lin-Manuel Miranda featuring Colombian and Latin American beats and instruments, has had over one million sales in the United States alone. On January 30th, Encato’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” landed as #1 for the third week in a row on Billboard 200. It was also the first Disney Animation song to reach the top 5 on the Hot 100 list since “Let it Go” from Frozen on January 31, ending the year with a bang. It was also the first-ever original song to reach Number 1 on the UK’s Official Singles Chart. But another key interesting, and perhaps a beautiful factor in all of this was the popularity that songs like “Encanto” and “Bruno” gained on social media. Thousands of people made their own versions of the “We Don’t Talk ABout Bruno” video. But what’s most powerful- thousands of people actually looked like the characters in the movie. Videos surfaced of children pointing at the screens with giant smiles on their faces, as if saying, “That’s me!” And hundreds of proud parents uploaded collages of the pictures of their children next to the characters, showing the resemblance. Encanto quickly became more than just a film, it became a general public accepted statement, a sentiment, and an example of what an inclusive movie should look like.
But the specificity was even down to the details. Encanto perfectly encapsulates what many Latinx families look like, sound like, and how they function. It incorporates Spanish and Spanglish. It breaks the mold and shows that two entirely different women, Luisa and Isabela Madrigal, can be equally beautiful and powerful. The film is also the first animated film to show different types of hair textures.
Shortly after its release, Encanto was already being nominated for – and winning- awards. On January 18th, the film’s Twitter account announced it had been nominated for Outstanding Animated Motion Picture from the NAACP Image Awards. The cast, producers, and musicians started receiving immense media attention. Lin-Manuel Miranda even had an interview on Good Morning America. On January 28th, Encanto became a Producer’s Guild of America Awards nominee for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures. Encanto was then nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film on February 3rd.
But the biggest nominations yet happened on February 8th, 2022, when Encanto’s Germaine Franco became an Academy Award nominee for Best Score. This was followed by two other Academy Award nominations, one for Best Original Song for “Dos Oruguitas” written by Lin-Manuel Miranda, and the other for Best Animated Feature Film.
On February 26, 2022, Encanto was announced the winner of the NAACP Image Awards for Outstanding Animated Motion Picture. And as more announcements continued, so did Encanto’s soaring popularity on social media and beyond, making the film a “global phenomenon”. On March 2, 2022, Sebastián Yatra performed “Dos Oruguitas” in Times Square for Good Morning America. This was followed by a triple win of Annie Awards for the film- including Best Music Feature. The film also won the BAFTA Award for Best Animated film on March 13th. This was followed by Yvett Merino and Clark Spencer winning the PGA Award for Outstanding Producer of Animated Theatrical Motion Pictures.
Then it was Oscar Night, on March 27, 2022, and Encanto played quite a big part in that celebration. Its diverse and multi-talented cast sang a special version of “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” that lifted up the audience, and Sebastián Yatra performed “Dos Oruguitas,” leaving everyone in tears. But the night became even more unforgettable, when Encanto, the film that made so many feel seen, understood, loved, celebrated, and represented, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film.