With the announcement of Oscar nominations comes my favorite
awards season tradition: the theatrical release curated by ShortsTV
of all the nominated short films. In three separate programs, the release gives
audiences the opportunity to see all fifteen of this year’s short films vying
for Oscar gold in the Live-Action, Animated, and Documentary categories.
Get a leg up
in your office Oscar pool, and catch up with all the nominees before the
Academy Awards ceremony takes place on Sunday, February 24.
Live
Action Shorts
The most controversial entry of any short this year, Irish
filmmaker Vincent Lambe’s “Detainment” dramatizes the police questioning of two 10-year-old boys under suspicion of
abducting and murdering a toddler. Inspired by the notorious James Bulger case
that horrified the UK in 1993, the short is well-crafted and incredibly
performed — particularly by young Ely Solan as one of
the accused boys — but I found myself wishing Lambe
was able to bring more insight to the shocking crime.
Marianne
Farley’s lovely “Marguerite” finds an aging woman
(Beatrice Picard) and her visiting nurse (Sandrine Bisson) forming an
unexpected connection when the older woman revisits a long-held regret from her
past. A touching portrait of compassion and empathy.
Two young
boys engage in a seemingly innocent game of power and one-upmanship that leads
to tragic consequences in the haunting “Fauve,” from Quรฉbรฉcois director Jรฉrรฉmy Comte. Gorgeous
cinematography and excellent performances from the two young actors make this
one a stunner.
In “Madre” a mother (Marta Nieto) receives a frantic phone
call from her six-year-old son, who’s away on vacation with his father and
finds himself alone on an empty beach. Unfolding almost entirely in a single
shot, Rodrigo Sorogoyen’s tense drama brings vivid
life to every parent’s worst nightmare.
The one
outright dud in this year’s lineup, “Skin” is a bewildering look at race in America, following the horrific events that
unfold after a black man smiles at a young white boy in a grocery store
checkout lane and ends up setting off a war between two gangs. Ham-fisted,
implausible, and woefully misguided.
Animated
Shorts
Domee Shi’s beautiful “Bao” confounded audiences when
it played in front of “Incredibles 2” this past summer, and I couldn’t love it
more. The modern fable is the story of a Chinese-Canadian woman who gets a new
chance at motherhood when one of her handmade dumplings suddenly comes to life.
Equally moving and mouth-watering.
A group
therapy session between various anthropomorphized critters descends into chaos
in “Animal Behaviour” from Canadian filmmakers David Fine and Alison Snowden. Cute, but not much
more, it’s also the one animated short to buck the common theme of parent-child
relationships.
Memories of
past and present condense and mingle in the mind of an elderly woman in the
poignant “Late Afternoon,” from Irish
filmmaker Louise Bagnall.
A young
girl’s dreams of becoming an astronaut are supported by her father and his
modest shoe repair business in the gorgeous “One
Small Step,” which packs a wallop of emotion into its economical
running time.
“Weekends” is an impressionistic look at a young boy’s
experiences splitting his time between the homes of his recently divorced
parents. With a painterly style, director Trevor Jimenez blends surreal imagery
and vivid emotion to powerful effect.
Documentary Shorts
The heartbreaking “Black
Sheep” lets Nigerian-British youth Cornelius Walker tell the
story of how, as a boy, his parents moved him out of London and into a small
village where he was surrounded by racists. Rather than fight back, he explains
how he chose to assimilate and become more like his tormentors, as the film
becomes a potent examination of identity and circumstance.
It’s hard to
judge a film like “End Game,” which tackles the
undeniably raw, emotional issue of palliative end-of-life care, and the medical
practitioners who seek to change their patients’ relationship to death in their
final days. Still, veteran filmmakers Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman (“The
Times of Harvey Milk,” “The Celluloid Closet”) bring a sensitive touch to the
difficult material.
“Lifeboat” chronicles the efforts of Sea-Watch, a German
non-profit whose volunteers rescue refugees trying to cross the Mediterranean
in search of a better life. In documenting the stories of both the refugees and
those who seek to help them, this powerful film puts a human face to a global
crisis, but I can’t help feeling like there’s more story here than can be
handled in a single short.
The seven-minute
“A Night in the Garden” consists
entirely of archival footage from a gathering of 20,000 American Nazi
supporters at Madison Square Garden in February of 1939. With little
editorializing, the film acts as a chilling cautionary tale of hatred then and
now.
The
empowering and uplifting “Period. End of Sentence.” follows what happens when a rural village outside Delhi, India installs a
first-of-its-kind sanitary pad machine. The women of the village learn to
manufacture and sell their own pads, finding economic and social independence, and
kicking off a most surprising revolution.
This article appears in Feb 6-12, 2019.
