2024 Academy Awards Category Breakdown: The Shorts

I present a truncated version of my usual in-depth category breakdowns. Here are the three shorts categories:

Documentary Short

Nominees

Death by Numbers

I Am Ready, Warden

Incident

Instruments of a Beating Heart

The Only Girl in the Orchestra

Incident is one of the most devastating, powerful, and infuriating short films in recent memory. It shows every possible angle of a police shooting while offering a rarely seen insight into the minds of the officers who perpetrate these crimes in real time. It’s a scathing indictment of our justice system and proof of what most of us knew or suspected. The question now: What are we prepared to do about it?

If Incident is a little too formally radical, with its lack of voiceover, talking-head interviews, or traditional structure, two other films in the lineup tackle similarly pressing issues with a more conventional style. I Am Ready, Warden tells the dual narrative of a convict on death row and the son of the man he murdered as both await the convict’s execution. It’s gripping viewing and visceral evidence of the fact that there are no winners in capital punishment.

Death by Numbers comes at capital punishment from a different angle: the point of view of a school shooting survivor testifying at the sentencing hearing for the murderer. This is an interesting pairing with I Am Ready, Warden, given this film’s framing around a hoped-for death sentence. I found much of Death by Numbers a little shallow and lacking in perspective, which is disappointing for a film about one of our nation’s most devastating crises.

Instruments of a Beating Heart and The Only Girl in the Orchestra are two very different musical documentaries, both quietly delightful in their own ways. It should not go unmentioned that another musical doc short won this category last year – The Last Repair Shop – but neither of these has that film’s artistry or thematic depth.

For the win, Incident may be just too darn experimental for these voters, and since they can give the award to something more easily digestible and still feel like they’re standing up for a cause, expect that to be the case. While a Death by Numbers win would not be shocking, I Am Ready, Warden packs the greater punch, so that’s the pick.

Will win: I Am Ready, Warden

Should win: Incident

Animated Short

Nominees

Beautiful Men

In the Shadow of the Cypress

Magic Candies

Wander to Wonder

Yuck!

I found myself a little underwhelmed by the Animated Short selections this year. In past years, this category has been loaded with bold, brilliant visions that push the boundaries of both animation and storytelling. Recent films like last year’s An Ostrich Told Me the World Was Fake and I Think I Believe It, 2020’s Opera, and 2014’s The Dam Keeper showcase the best of what these shorts can do. This year, only one of these five lived up to that standard.

Wander to Wonder is the front-runner almost by default. It won the Annie and the BAFTA in this category. It’s a beautifully rendered stop-motion piece that tells a story of breaking free from the strictures of the lives we believe we must lead. The animation is key to the execution. It’s funny, surprising, and ultimately inspiring. Would that there were four more of these in the lineup.

Beautiful Men, about three bald brothers at a hair-restoration clinic, comes the closest but ultimately is a little too slight. Yuck! and Magic Candies are both sweet stories of children learning about the world around them. And, if I’m being honest, I found In the Shadow of the Cypress a little impenetrable. It looks good, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

Will win: Wander to Wonder

Should win: Wander to Wonder

Live-Action Short

Nominees

A Lien

Anuja

I’m Not a Robot

The Last Ranger

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

This is an excellent slate of nominees, and even the least among them is an endearingly strange ride with more to say than it perhaps first appears. Let’s just do a brief survey of the topics covered by these five shorts: the extra-legal deportation of immigrants from this country; the limited options afforded to children trapped in India’s class structure; our AI future and its moral and ethical implications; rhino poaching in South Africa; and a true story of heroism amid an ethnic cleansing in ‘90s Croatia.

I would say A Lien has the inside track to the win here, given its urgent relevance to the current political situation in this country. It operates like a ticking-clock thriller as a family fights to avoid a trap set by ICE in which the agency explicitly promises a chance at a green card while hoping to lure and round up the most vulnerable among us. A title card at the end of the film tells us this is a true practice used by ICE. This is hardly surprising but no less infuriating.

The Last Ranger is a gorgeously photographed ode to the people who put their lives at risk in South Africa to prevent animal poachers from carrying out their awful work. I thought this was an excellent film – well written, well acted, and wonderfully constructed. 

Another tribute to a fallen hero, The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent tells the story of Tomo Buzov, who stood up to call out the injustice of a massacre and was himself brutally killed as a result. The filmmaking is brilliant in the way it puts you on the train with Buzov, not in his shoes but rather those of an observer, challenging you to consider whether you would stand up for what’s right under these circumstances. Tragically, Buzov’s son died just yesterday.

Anuja is a sweet story about a pre-teen girl working in a sweatshop in India who has an opportunity to take a scholarship at a boarding school but doesn’t want to leave her sister. It’s a nice little movie, but it lacks an ending. From a voting standpoint, the big thing in its favor is producer Mindy Kaling. It never hurts to have a big Hollywood celeb on your side in the shorts categories.

Finally, I’m Not a Robot takes a fascinating and comically absurd premise and stretches it out to its darkly logical conclusion. I won’t spoil any of the film’s surprises here, but suffice it to say, it presents a reality that feels just a step or two away from where we find ourselves now.

Will win: A Lien

Should win: A Lien

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Documentary Short

Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.

Best Documentary Short

The nominees are:

The ABCs of Book Banning

The Barber of Little Rock

Island in Between

The Last Repair Shop

Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó

The ABCs of Book Banning

It became clear to me while watching this wonderful little film that it takes stunning levels of weakness and cowardice to ban books. To fear ideas is to reveal one’s own lack of ideas. If you perceive the words on a page to pose a threat to your power, then you have no real power. Director Sheila Nevins rightly (and mercifully) leaves out these voices of fear, prejudice, and hate. The film points out that we have heard enough from them already.

Instead, Nevins, along with co-directors Trish Adiesic and Nazenet Habtezghi, trains the camera on those most affected by the backward-facing efforts of a few charlatans: the children. The filmmakers allow the children to summarize for us the stories deemed too controversial or corrupting to appear in schools. In most cases, the children then look straight into the camera and ask, Why? Why can’t they learn about Rosa Parks? Why can’t two male penguins have a family? Good questions, kids. Why, indeed?

The unfortunate answer is because a bunch of small-minded elites can feel their power slipping from them, and they will stop at nothing to reassert the control on which they thrive. The people who scream loudest about freedom are the quickest to tell you what freedoms you are allowed or what freedoms they will grant you. True freedom requires the open marketplace of ideas, and if your marketplace can’t handle a couple gay penguins, it’s time to burn it down and build a better one.

The Barber of Little Rock

I guarantee those same politicians and community members who don’t want children reading books also don’t want you seeing this film. From John Hoffman and Christine Turner, The Barber of Little Rock is about the damaging effects of race-based income inequality and the Little Rock barber who is doing something about it.

The film follows Arlo Washington, a black barber who founded a nonprofit community bank to help bridge the wealth gap in his area and provide opportunities to the people who are often left with nowhere to turn. There are interviews with community members who have received assistance, and they talk about the lack of options and lack of hope for black community members. 

In just 35 minutes, the story covers everything from the structures in place to keep certain communities down to the small ways individuals can truly make a difference. It is an urgent examination of the need for local solutions to global problems. Washington is just one man who saw a need in his community and set out to make a difference. It is an example from which we can all learn.

Island in Between

S. Leo Chiang’s portrait of the Kinmen Islands, which sit uncomfortably between China and Taiwan, is a powerful reflection on being caught between two warring worlds. One wishes Chiang had gone deeper into the specifics of the conflict, but perhaps anyone well versed in history would find such a recap dull and redundant. Instead, the director creates more of a collage of life on an island where you can see your enemy’s shores from your own beach.

In fact, there are still tanks embedded in the sand from the most recent Chinese aggression. But, even with the threat of war ever looming, life on the Kinmen Islands goes on. Children go to school. Shoppers shop. Influencers take selfies on the beach. It is a fascinating liminal space in which to exist. One cannot live life in fear, but it is also impossible to forget the reality, particularly with the pro-Taiwan propaganda speakers blaring from the beach.

The Last Repair Shop

From the directing duo that brought us 2020 Documentary Short nominee A Concerto Is a Conversation comes the story of the repair shop that handles musical instruments for Los Angeles public school students. This is easily the most complete and well produced film of the bunch, and directors Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers put as much love and care into the film as the craftspeople they depict put into their work.

The film is broken up into four chapters, each devoted to a different member of the repair shop staff. Proudfoot and Bowers must have been ecstatic to find such an eclectic group of people who have lived such remarkable lives. From a bluegrass performer who once opened for Elvis Presley to a piano enthusiast whose family escaped the Armenian genocide, the film packs a tremendous amount of information into a short timespan.

Yet, the filmmakers never forget their mission: to highlight the importance of musical education for school children. We get a number of interviews with the kids, who talk about their love for music and how much their instruments mean to them. The expertly constructed film makes it clear that without this repair shop, thousands of kids would have no outlet for their creative talents and, furthermore, how sad a world that would be.

Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó

If have seen the footage of the Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó team reacting to their Academy Award nomination, then you already understand how this story of two Chinese grannies has resonated so far and wide this Oscar season. The film is a beautiful tribute to love, friendship, and the joie de vivre to which we should all aspire. Yet, it does not shy away from depicting some of the harsher realities of aging, and in their own small way, these women become heroes of a sort, refusing to give in quietly to the neverending passage of time.

Filmmakers Sean Wang and Sam Davis have the women try on a number of different costumes and film them in a variety of humorous situations. A personal favorite is of the two grannies watching Superbad, apparently for the first time. It’s just funny watching people watch Superbad – check out Saltburn for further evidence of this fact. 

But, the women make it very clear that their lives are not usually this exciting. They have a burst of energy from their grandson’s arrival. It is a reminder that loneliness can be just as devastating as age. Finally, the film becomes a profound statement on appreciating our loved ones while we still can. Thankfully for us, Wang and Davis have shared their appreciation with all of us.

The final analysis

A Netflix-produced film has taken this award in three of the previous seven years, but for the first time since 2015, there is no Netflix film in the lineup, leaving the door open to any of these shorts. As I write, I am waffling between The ABCs of Book Banning and The Last Repair Shop for the win. The timeliness and urgency of the message in ABCs may be enough to carry the day, but The Last Repair Shop does not lack for a message nor for quality. 

Proudfoot won this category as a solo director two years ago for the lovely The Queen of Basketball, and he would be just the seventh person to win multiple Documentary Short awards. When all else fails, though, the Academy does love a handsomely produced doc about the power and importance of art, so for now, I’ll lean that way, too.

Will win: The Last Repair Shop

Should win: The ABCs of Book Banning

Should have been here: Last Song from Kabul

A note about my favorite snub: It’s actually a little surprising the Academy did not nominate Kevin Macdonald’s doc about an orchestra of orphaned Afghan girls looking to keep their musical dreams alive amid the oppression of the Taliban. Macdonald is a previous Oscar winner for his feature documentary One Day in September and has a lengthy Hollywood resumé. Here, he has crafted a lovely ode to the endurance of the human spirit and the power of art and performance to remind us that more connects us than divides us.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Documentary Short

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Documentary Short

The nominees are:

The Elephant Whisperers

Haulout

How Do You Measure a Year?

The Martha Mitchell Effect

Stranger at the Gate

Maybe it’s not fair, but I have long associated this category with a despair that beggars belief. I think it goes back to 2015, when the five nominated films covered, in no particular order: Ebola virus, Agent Orange victims, the Holocaust, racism in the criminal justice system, and honor killings in Pakistan. Each was well made and powerful, but it was a brutal 2 ½ hours at the movies. Anyway, it has been a joke between my wife and I that if we’re going to see the nominated doc shorts, someone better bring tissues.

Imagine our surprise, then, when this year’s crop of nominees failed to rip our hearts out and stomp on them. Instead, we got a batch of solid, intelligent movies that cover a wide range of important subjects with style and insight. I am not saying I have a problem with unrelenting sadness at the movies – quite the contrary; those are my favorite kinds of films – but at least for one season, this eclectic group offers a breath of fresh air for the category.

The Elephant Whisperers – That said, just because these films aren’t inherently dark and tragic doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be ready to shed a few tears. Case in point, Kartiki Gonsalves’ film about an Indian couple that finds love while caring for orphaned baby elephants is a shot straight to the heart. Bomman and Belli work at a national park in southern India, and their special gift is the ability to raise baby elephants, who generally die when separated from their families.

We meet two adorable baby elephants during the film’s 39-minute runtime, and it would take a heart of stone not to fall instantly in love with both. They are truly miraculous. But, Gonsalves has more on her mind than cute baby animals. She explores the root cause of their abandonment – human encroachment on wild land – and the depth of emotions these creatures are capable of experiencing. They are more like us than they are not, and Gonsalves argues that if more of us realized that, maybe we wouldn’t treat them so shabbily.

Stranger at the Gate – I had mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand, director Joshua Seftel expertly uses the tricks and tropes of the documentary form to set the audience up for one story, then pulls the rug out from under us at the last minute. Seftel’s mastery of the narrative structure he is exploiting is quite a sight to behold. However, all of that formal trickery is ill-suited to the actual story of the film and ends up feeling more manipulative than imaginative.

The film is an exploration of the life and motives of former US Marine turned wannabe domestic terrorist Richard McKinney. Seftel interviews McKinney, his ex-wife, and step-daughter, as well as a number of members of the Islamic community center he planned to bomb. I’ll let the movie hang on to its surprises, but suffice it to say that by the time Seftel pulls his magic trick toward the end, he had already lost me. Not what you’re hoping for as a filmmaker trying to get across a message of peace, understanding, and forgiveness.

The Martha Mitchell Effect – The Martha Mitchell effect, the condition after which this film is named, refers to an instance in which a medical professional diagnoses someone as delusional despite that person’s fears being accurate and true. In the common vernacular, it’s gaslighting, or: Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you. If you watched the recent Julia Roberts miniseries, Gaslit, in which Roberts plays Martha Mitchell, you understand the origin of the term.

If you didn’t watch it – no shame intended; I didn’t either – Anne Alvergue’s and Debra McClutchy’s film covers the same territory in a scant 40 minutes. Martha Mitchell was the wife of US Attorney General John Mitchell during the Nixon Administration and was one of the early whistleblowers around the Watergate Scandal. The administration attempted to silence and discredit her, but she persevered to see Richard Nixon resign the presidency. The film does an excellent job of establishing Martha as a person outside of Watergate before touching on the scandal. It is fascinating, informative, and not just a little funny.

How Do You Measure a Year? – Experimental documentary filmmaker Jay Rosenblatt was nominated in this category last year for When We Were Bullies, a reflection on a bullying incident in which the director was involved when he was in the fifth grade. This time, he turns the camera on his own child for a fascinating consideration of what it is like to grow up and where all that time goes when children age. Starting when she turned 2, Rosenblatt filmed his daughter, Ella, answering the same set of questions every year on her birthday.

We watch Ella grow and change from a precocious toddler to a shy adolescent to a depressed teen to a mature young woman on the verge of adulthood. Rosenblatt never goes backward, nor does he ever take us out of the film to reflect on anything he presents. In this way, he emphasizes the slow march of time and the ways we can never get that time back. Ella will never be 2 years old again. She will never again be the 9-year-old belting out songs from Rent. But no matter how old she gets, she will always be connected to her family, and that, in the end, seems to be the point.

Haulout – My favorite of the bunch is also probably the least likely to win, though it has received accolades from a number of international film festivals where it has played, so all hope is not lost. This quietly haunting nature doc comes from brother and sister duo Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva, who lived with marine biologist Maxim Chakilev for three months as he observed the annual walrus migration at Cape Heart-Stone on the far northeastern tip of Russia. The first time the walruses surround the hut in which the trio lives, it is one of the strangest and most striking images in any movie this year. 

The walruses stop at this beach to take a break during their migration. Each year, fewer walruses survive the journey because as oceanic ice flows melt, there are fewer places for the walruses to rest on their trip. Many die from exhaustion. In 2020, the year this was filmed, record-high temperatures led to a record-high number of walrus deaths. The camera observes Chakilev as he tallies the dead. It is profoundly sad and serves as irrefutable evidence of our warming climate’s effect on the natural world, even in places we rarely see.

The final analysis

Netflix has had at least one nominee in this category in each of the past seven years, fielding two winners (The White Helmets in 2016 and Period. End of Sentence. in 2018). Last year, the streaming giant had three of the five nominated doc shorts, though all lost to the New York Times-produced The Queen of Basketball. This year, what I would call the two frontrunners both come from Netflix: The Elephant Whisperers and The Martha Mitchell Effect. 

Between the two, I would give the edge to The Elephant Whisperers, which has the benefit of a sweet, compelling love story between its two main human subjects, in addition to the beautiful elephant footage. A spoiler could come in the form of Stranger at the Gate, which has the whiff of political relevance, and voters may take to the central story arc, which I found questionable but some may find inspirational. For now, I’m sticking with my gut.

Will win: The Elephant Whisperers

Should win: Haulout

Should have been here: The Flagmakers

A note about my favorite snub: I had a chance to catch The Flagmakers, from directors Cynthia Wade and Sharon Liese, as part of a free National Geographic film series at the American Cinematheque. I found it a stirring dissection of what a symbol like the US flag can mean to the immigrants tasked with manufacturing it. Never shying away from difficult questions and hard truths about this nation, the film would have been a more than worthy inclusion on this list.

Next time: Documentary Feature

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Documentary Short

Director Daphne Matziaraki's 4.1 Miles is nominated for Best Documentary Short.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day leading up to the ceremony for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories and more.

Best Documentary Short

The nominees are:

4.1 Miles

Extremis

Joe’s Violin

Watani: My Homeland

The White Helmets

The political winds of the nation are unavoidable in many of this year’s categories, but they seem particularly foregrounded here. One imagines at least four of these five nominees as a direct affront to the anti-immigrant, anti-art, anti-intellectual presidential administration. What all five of these films share, however – and what may be the biggest offense to the orange man in the White House – is that they are all resolutely pro-human.

These films celebrate the basic humanity that connects us all, and as these subjects face unimaginable but very real tragedy and pain, they serve as a reminder of our responsibility to each other. This world does not belong, if it even belongs to anyone, to just one nation or just one people. The house is on fire, and if it goes down in flames, we all burn with it. While those in power light their matches, these films remind us to hold up our end of the hose so maybe we can salvage something.

4.1 Miles (directed by Daphne Matziaraki) – At one time or another, most people have wondered if they have what it takes to save a life. Few are ever confronted with that prospect. Greek Coast Guard captain Kyriakos Papadopoulos always wanted to be a commercial fisherman. Instead, he joined the Coast Guard, once a peaceful profession for him before the migrant crisis. Now, he is tasked with saving hundreds of lives every day, a duty for which he did not sign up but which he holds sacred no less.

Matziaraki, who won the Student Academy Award for 4.1 Miles, follows Papadopoulos as he is called out to rescue stranded boat after stranded boat, filled with men, women, and children fleeing violence and oppression. He sees the faces – the anguish, the desperation, the despair – every day, but he goes back out every single time. These migrants had no choice but escape, and Papadopoulos has no choice but to help them.

The film is a wonderful companion piece to Gianfranco Rosi’s also Oscar-nominated feature documentary Fire at Sea. 4.1 Miles is more focused and intimate, while Fire at Sea is a more all-encompassing experience, differences mostly attributable to runtime and reflecting not at all the quality of the endeavors. Matziaraki, who is Greek but lives in the Bay Area, has a wonderful feel for life in this town, and in just 26 minutes, she uncovers a disquieting rhythm of events as it becomes clear these stranded boats are becoming more and more a part of daily life.

Watani: My Homeland (directed by Marcel Mettelsiefen) – When filming a documentary on current events, watching history unfold before your camera, you can never be certain where the story will lead you. The courage and dedication to follow along its winding path is part of what makes a great documentarian and why films like Steve James’ Hoop Dreams and Barbara Kopple’s Harlan County, USA represent two of the peaks of the form. So, when German filmmaker Mettelsiefen began filming Syrian freedom fighter Abu Ali and his family, he could not have known the journey he was about to capture.

Mettelsiefen first filmed the Ali family in 2013 in Aleppo, Syria, for a PBS Frontline documentary. He returned the next year and the next for a follow-up doc, finally visiting the family once more in 2016 to shoot footage for this film. We are privileged to watch the Ali family’s four children grow and develop and mature over the course of years. We see how the conflict shapes and molds them, but we also get to see how the people they are is within them.

The oldest daughter, whether she knows it or not, is a poet, the middle daughter is irrepressible, while the only son is mature beyond his years. It should go without saying but bears repeating this family is not so different from any of ours but for the dire circumstances under which it lives. Dropped into a quiet American suburb, these children would still be poetic, irrepressible, and mature. If not for geography, they would be our neighbors and friends, though Mettelsiefen argues, in very real ways, they already are our neighbors and friends.

The White Helmets (directed by Orlando von Einsiedel) – Von Einsiedel and nominated producer Joanna Natasegara previously were nominated for Best Documentary two years ago for Virunga, which follows a team of volunteers fighting to save the last members of an endangered species. Both films concern heroes who are ordinary people but put themselves at great risk to make the world a better place.

Here, we follow the eponymous White Helmets, a well-organized collective of ordinary Syrian citizens who have dedicated themselves to helping the victims of the Syrian and Russian bombing campaigns. When a bomb strikes, these men don their helmets and rush into the destruction, putting out fires, pulling people out of the rubble, and administering medical aid. These men are carpenters and accountants and chefs, but when crisis strikes, as it so often does in Syria, they are the first responders, the people on whom the community counts.

It is, however, no tale of easy heroism. Von Einsiedel shows us the toll this work takes on the men, both physically and emotionally. The buildings bombed are their neighborhoods. The victims are their friends and family. They are always at risk and always targets. There is no safety in this place but what these brave men offer each other and their communities. We see this is not much but that it is better to have something, someone, than nothing at all and no one.

Joe’s Violin (directed by Kahane Cooperman) – There are no ordinary circumstances under which Joe Feingold and Brianna Perez would meet. Feingold is a 91-year-old Holocaust survivor, and Perez is a 12-year-old student in The Bronx. Cooperman’s film shows us the bond they form over the title instruments and how small acts of charity can ripple through lifetimes.

After Feingold was liberated from a forced-labor camp at the end of World War II, he traded a carton of cigarettes for a violin, an instrument he had played since he was a child. It would be nearly 70 years before Perez came into his life. After hearing about an instrument drive on the radio, Feingold decided he no longer played his violin and perhaps someone else could get some use out of it. The instrument ended up in The Bronx at a school for underprivileged children, where learning violin is part of the curriculum. Given the violin’s storied past, the school determines to give it to a student who will cherish its history and create more of her own. This is Perez.

Cooperman mostly stays out of the way of the material, smartly recognizing she has a story that needs no embellishment. Her camera’s presence is all we require, and when Feingold and Perez meet and she plays for him, we are like a fly on the wall, witnessing something extraordinary. Yes, these are the kind of moments music makes, but more than that, these moments happen when we reach out, in however small a way, to connect to another person.

Extremis (directed by Dan Krauss) – Conservative religious groups and certain members of the government would like us to spend a lot of time wondering when life begins. Extremis asks when life ends. Krauss’ camera takes us inside an intensive care unit, where doctors must help families make among the toughest decisions they ever will – whether to take their loved ones off life support or whether to extend their lives, and perhaps their suffering, by any means necessary.

The film is undoubtedly emotionally charged as we see families wrestle with grief, guilt, faith, and hope, but it is never clear what the audience’s takeaway from any of this should be. Extremis feels like a Rorschach test, which is perhaps what was intended by Krauss, a previous nominee in this category 11 years ago. It is impossible to watch the film without wondering what we would do for our loved ones as they near death or what we would want done for us under similar circumstances. Whatever you bring to the movie, though, will be what you take from it. This makes for compelling viewing, but it is not particularly enlightening.

The final analysis

Any could win, and except for Extremis, which is the weakest of these nominees, though by no means a bad film, any would be a worthy winner. It will be interesting to see what kind of night we are in for at the Academy Awards. The likely historic success of La La Land suggests this is the year of escapism, of turning to the movies to forget that the world is falling apart around us. However, in little ways, all across the ceremony, Academy members have the chance to lodge their protest.

Under normal circumstances, or even just circumstances when the Doomsday Clock felt closer to 11:59 than midnight, I would predict Joe’s Violin without a second thought. However, these are not normal circumstances, and midnight is fast approaching. While the uplifting music documentary about the Holocaust survivor would seem to check all the boxes of a usual winner, I cannot imagine the Academy would pass up the opportunity to address the concerns of the moment, if only because these concerns are everyone’s concerns.

This leaves us with three possibilities: Watani, The White Helmets, and 4.1 Miles. It is possible the two Syrian-set films will split the vote and open the door for 4.1 Miles. For emotional resonance, though, not to mention the dedication of the filmmakers and the global relevance of its topic, it seems Watani may be the film to beat.

Will win: Watani: My Homeland

Should win: 4.1 Miles

Tomorrow: Best Director

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Documentary Short

Last Day of Freedom is among this year's Academy Award nominees for Best Documentary Short.

Welcome to Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, our daily look at this year’s Academy Awards race. Be sure to check back every day this month for analysis of each of the Academy’s 24 categories.

Best Documentary Short

The nominees are:

Body Team 12

Chau, beyond the lines

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness

Last Day of Freedom

There has been talk in social media circles and elsewhere that this may be the dourest lineup ever assembled for this category. Put briefly, these five short films range in topic from the Ebola virus in Liberia, Agent Orange exposure in Vietnam, and the Holocaust to honor killings in Pakistan and the death penalty in California. On the surface, no, this group does not exactly give off positive vibes, but if we are honest, this category is usually home to unimaginable horrors and tragedies beyond belief. So, in that context, this year is about par for the course.

The simple reason is that in the 40 minutes or less that these films run, emotional resonance counts for a lot, and nothing gets the heart pumping like death and injustice, which all of these have in spades. However, it would be a mistake to think of this as just a grim pageant of despair, though it also is that. Rather, each of these movies – with one exception that we will get to in a moment – has something vital to say about the world in which we live and how we treat the people with whom we share this world.

It is a cliché, but yes, the Academy is inclined to vote for Holocaust films. When you remember that a majority of Academy members were born during or right after World War II, many of them into families directly affected by the war, that tendency is understandable. Beyond that general assessment, it is a little hard to pin down a pattern in this category through the years. If a film covers an important topic with an intimate story that tugs at the heart strings, that film has the makeup of a winner. Our likely frontrunner this year does not quite cover those bases, but it is about the Holocaust.

Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah – For those unaware, Shoah is a 10-hour documentary about the Holocaust directed by Claude Lanzmann. It is a masterpiece of filmmaking and considered by most to be the definitive record of the Holocaust. Lanzmann began work on the film in 1973 and was not finished until 12 years later. He traveled across the globe, put himself directly in harm’s way, endured intense emotional trauma, and came away with a grand statement on the depths of human suffering and the capacity for evil demonstrated by the Holocaust.

The making of Shoah is a remarkable story, but the 40-minute runtime of director Adam Benzine’s Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah is not nearly enough time to tell it. Benzine essentially collects a greatest-hits package of Lanzmann telling stories from the production, using specific moments from Shoah to lead Lanzmann into a memory. Lanzmann, a gifted storyteller not known for his brevity, has time for about four or five memories. Knowing it took 12 years to make a 10-hour movie, four or five recollections from the production just do not cut it.

Still, as we discussed yesterday with the feature documentaries, the Academy loves films about artists, and that is doubly true of films about filmmakers. Lanzmann is not widely liked – as mentioned in the film, he is prickly, stubborn, and just generally difficult – but he is highly respected. Though he is not a nominee, awarding this film about Lanzmann’s work could be a way for the Academy to honor Lanzmann himself, who has never been recognized with either an Oscar win or a nomination.

Last Day of Freedom – First-time filmmakers Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman immediately distinguish their film by choosing to present it entirely in hand-drawn animation. It is not unheard of to blend documentary and animation, and among the benefits of the shift in medium is that it allows the filmmakers to depict scenes they otherwise never could. In Last Day of Freedom, Hibbert-Jones and Talisman match of the vividness of their interview subject’s tragic tale with the vibrancy of their animation style, drawing viewers deeper into the narrative than traditional storytelling techniques might.

Last Day of Freedom tells of Manny Babbitt, a mentally ill Vietnam War veteran whom a failed justice system executed for murder. There is no question of whether Babbitt committed the crime, but because of his personal history, his level of culpability is suspect at best. As interview subject Bill Babbitt, Manny’s brother, identifies: In an election year for the district attorney, blood demands blood. At no point did Manny Babbitt receive fair or just treatment under the law with an incompetent attorney, an overreaching, politically minded DA, and an all-white jury.

The tragedy of the film – beyond the obvious miscarriages of justice – is in listening to Bill Babbitt tell the tale of his brother’s life. The animation allows us to see this tale in full as we watch the two men dig for clams at the beach or play football together as children. Hibbert-Jones and Talisman bring Manny Babbitt back to life through their drawings, and though we cannot undo the harm that has been done, the film makes it clear we have a moral responsibility to prevent further harm in this world.

Chau, beyond the lines – Director Courtney Marsh started out with the intention of making one film – a disturbing chronicle of daily life in a Vietnamese hospital for children with disabilities caused by exposure to Agent Orange – yet over the course of eight years, she allowed her film to transform into a stirring portrait of defiance and triumph. The nurses interviewed in the film refer to the hospital as a camp, which gives the impression of a sort of summer day school, but as the film’s primary subject, Chau, later identifies, it is closer to a prison where the disabled are held in isolation.

Chau is told by the nurses his dream of becoming an artist and clothing designer is unattainable and a waste of everyone’s time. We learn early on that children can be voted out of the hospital by nurses who no longer want to deal with them, and Chau treads dangerously close to that line. So, rather than be told to leave, he takes off on his own, first staying with his parents, who steal his disability checks, then by himself in the city.

Though his struggles with finding a job and fending for himself are all-consuming, he returns to his dream of creating art and begins turning out beautiful paintings by holding the brush in his mouth. It is only by Marsh’s dedication to the process, visiting Chau over eight years, that the film undergoes a transformation from one about victimization to one about accomplishment.

A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness – There is no such triumph or victory in director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy’s A Girl in the River. There is only pain, misery, and endless oppression. Saba is a 19-year-old girl who marries the man she loves, though her family has forbidden it. For supposedly bringing shame upon her family, Saba is taken to the river by her father and uncle, shot in the head, bagged, and thrown in the water. She miraculously survives the attack and sets out to find justice, but in Pakistan, where we are told 1,000 girls a year are murdered in so-called “honor killings,” justice may not be achievable.

Obaid-Chinoy is a previous Oscar winner in this category for co-directing Saving Face, which follows along similar thematic lines but concerns victims of acid attacks in Pakistan. However, where that film was a record of hope and shined a light forward, A Girl in the River is despairingly bleak. Saba becomes a victim all over again as local custom demands she forgive her attackers so they can be set free without punishment and so that ill will among neighbors can be avoided. It is an entire culture built on the subjugation of women and the privileging of “honor” over humanity.

Body Team 12 – The shortest and consequently least satisfying among this year’s nominees, director David Darg’s Body Team 12 shows the Ebola crisis in Liberia through the eyes of a woman tasked with removing the dead bodies of Ebola victims from homes. Running just 13 minutes, much of the footage shown in the film is of the process of preparing to remove a body, the removal, and the cleanup afterward – truly, you have never seen so many shots of someone putting on goggles.

Speaking over most of this footage is Garmai Sumo, the only female member of the body team, who takes great pride in the work she is doing for her country. She sees it as her patriotic duty to help stop the spread of the Ebola virus. In fulfilling this duty, she puts herself and her family at great risk and loses most of her friends to fear of contracting the virus. Sumo is intelligent, talented, and philosophical, and one wishes we only had more time to spend with her.

The final analysis

Any of these could win and it would not be surprising. As is so often the case with the shorts categories, the winner comes down to who has seen the films. Urgency of topic and emotional impact often show the way, but at least four of these films concern issues we continue to deal with in our society, and they all tread in similar emotional waters with questions about human decency and moral obligation. No one film stands out as necessarily more deserving than the others, so this is a best-guess scenario, and my best guess is Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah, though I would add A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness is a strong second possibility.

Will win: Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah

Should win: Last Day of Freedom

Tomorrow: Best Foreign Language Film