Don Hertzfeldt (1976) is an Academy Award nominee whose popular animated films have been featured at over a thousand film festivals and venues around the world. He received a BA in Film Studies from UC Santa Barbara in 1998, where he produced his first four animated films: Ah L’Amour (1995), Genre (1996), Lily and Jim (1997) and Billy’s Balloon (1998), the latter receiving a nomination for the Palm D’Or at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. His following film, Rejected (2000), was nominated for an Oscar in 2001, and films The Meaning of Life (2005), Everything Will Be OK (2006), I Am So Proud of You (2008) attracted large audiences. Since 1995 his cartoons have collectively received over 150 international awards.