National Film Vault

FILM NOTES

DreamWorks Animation released Shrek in May 2001, a film that fundamentally shifted the landscape of American feature animation. Arriving as a pointed counterweight to the Disney fairy-tale tradition, it combined irreverent humor with genuine emotional depth and became the inaugural winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Shot on 35mm release prints, the film remains a landmark of early computer-generated cinema.

This cell, titled Fiona and Shrek, captures three near-consecutive frames from the quiet, intimate moment in which Princess Fiona tends to Shrek's wound. The close framing places Shrek in the foreground looking downward while Fiona attends to him below, a rare still point of vulnerability between the two central characters preserved across three subtly varied frames.