TORONTO -- Montreal animator Theodore Ushev has been toiling away at his craft for over 15 years and has 16 films to his credit.
He came to believe that his short films were too avant garde for consideration for mainstream awards like the Oscars.
So when he got his first Oscar nomination on Tuesday for "Blind Vaysha," he became weak in the knees.
"When I heard the name of my film, I just stopped watching, because I fainted," Ushev said in a telephone interview shortly after the nominations were announced.
"I cried. At first I laughed and then I cried again. It's out of control.... It's all strange and exciting."
"Blind Vaysha," produced by the National Film Board of Canada, is nominated for best animated short.
Two others in the field of five nominees also have Canadian ties: "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" is directed by Robert Valley of Vancouver, and "Piper" is helmed by Alan Barillaro of Niagara Falls, Ont.
The other two nominees are "Pearl" and "Borrowed Time."
"The biggest surprise is that the Disney film was not nominated," Ushev said of "Inner Workings," which made the short list for the category in November.
"So I can say, 'Yeah, we beat Disney!' The Disney film is a high, high-budget film; they put a lot of money into productions and our film is just a cheap, do-it-yourself film. I did everything myself. All the drawings, all the animation on the film was done by me."
Ushev, a former graphic designer who was born in Bulgaria and moved to Montreal in 1999, based "Blind Vaysha" on a philosophical short story by his friend Georgi Gospodinov.
The film -- which is also up for an Annie Award, which is like the Oscars of the animated world -- follows a girl with split vision: Her left eye can only see the past and her right only sees the future.
The story is about being in the moment, said Ushev, 48, who was also shortlisted for an Oscar for 2013's "Gloria Victoria" but ultimately didn't get a nomination.
"I think it's the biggest problem now in our generation that we feel so nostalgic about the past and are so afraid of the future," he said from his local Montreal coffee shop, where he'd recovered from his fainting spell by eating three muffins.
"Dark" is a word many use to describe Ushev's films, he said, and he worried that might hinder his chances for an Oscar.
"I won all kinds of awards in festivals, covered almost all of the festivals, but never got into the Oscars because I thought that my films are too abstract, too avant garde, too elitist, too dark," he said.
But he never compromised.
"I was just doing what I want to do and suddenly it happened that the academy recognized (it)."
