Awards and nominations:
Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival than any other filmmaker, with eight: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I Am So Proud of You, Wisdom Teeth, It's Such a Beautiful Day, World of Tomorrow, and World of Tomorrow Episode Two. He returned to the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 to serve on the Short Film Awards Jury.
In 1999, at the age of 22, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Billy's Balloon, where he was the youngest director in competition. The same year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury Award.
In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for his fifth short film, Rejected. He lost to Michaël Dudok de Wit for Father and Daughter.
In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch."
In 2002, Hertzfeldt joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
In 2007, Hertzfeldt's Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Award for Short Film at the Sundance Film Festival, a prize rarely given to an animated film.
In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.
In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.
In 2009, Rejected was the only short film named one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon.com. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post.
In April 2010, at the age of 33, Hertzfeldt received the San Francisco International Film Festival's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award "for his unique contributions to film and animation," and "for challenging the boundaries of his craft."
Hertzfeldt was the youngest director named in the "They Shoot Pictures, Don't They" list of "The 100 Important Animation Directors" of all time,
In 2012, Hertzfeldt received the Ted M. Larson memorial award from the Fargo Film Festival, for his "contributions to film culture."
In 2015, Hertzfeldt won the Grand Jury Award for Short Film a second time at the Sundance Film Festival, for World of Tomorrow.
In December 2015, Hertzfeldt received a special award from the Austin Film Critics Association, "in celebration of a career of remarkable short filmmaking and contributions to animation spanning two decades, with 2015's award-winning "World of Tomorrow" being recognized as his best work to date."
Hertzfeldt has been nominated for three Annie Awards for Best Animated Short Film. He lost for Rejected in 2001 and Everything Will Be OK in 2007 and won for World of Tomorrow in 2016.
In 2016, World of Tomorrow was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards, Hertzfeldt's second nomination.