20 Fantastic Blimps, Balloons, And Dirigibles In Movies

16. The Red Balloon (1956)

Up (animated film)
Lopert Pictures

Clocking in at barely over a half hour, with nearly no dialogue in it, The Red Balloon was such a moving masterpiece that it became the only short film ever to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

The simplest of stories follows young Pascal as he meets a somehow sentient red balloon. They become fast friends, and he accompanies the balloon on a walkabout through the streets of Paris and eventually into Pascal’s classroom. The tragic ending seems quaint compared to the others on this list, but the film is a marvel of simple visual storytelling.

So nothing blows up or anything, but not all balloon movies need mindless destruction and violence, okay?

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Up (2009)
 
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Chris Vander Kaay knows the hidden secrets of the world, but he frequently forgets them. He has them written on a piece of paper along with his passwords, but he seems to have misplaced that as well.