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 Live Action 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 Live Action Short

The nominees are:

The After

Invincible

Knight of Fortune

Red, White, and Blue

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

The After

Produced by and starring David Oyelowo, this acclaimed short follows family man Dayo (Oyelowo) in the aftermath of a mass murder that claimed the lives of his wife and daughter. Oyelowo gives a stirring performance, and it’s easy to see why, on paper, the material would attract a star of his caliber. Unfortunately, the film kind of fizzles out right at the moment where it feels like it could begin to take off.

In his grief, Dayo quits his high-powered job and takes up driving for a rideshare company. He listens to people’s lives and observes, sometimes happily, sometimes with sadness, until one day a family gets in his car: a mother, a father, and a daughter who looks remarkably similar to his own deceased child. It has all the makings of an interesting climax, but filmmaker Misan Harriman doesn’t quite know how to land the plane. All else aside, Oyelowo is excellent in the leading role, and Harriman certainly has the chops to make a great film next time around.

Invincible

Inspired by a true story, this highly lauded Canadian film tells of Marc-Antoine, a troubled kid who has been sentenced to a period of time at a youth detention center. We never learn exactly what his transgression was, but it doesn’t matter. The point of the film is to show how incarceration can wear on the souls of those imprisoned.

We see that Marc-Antoine, portrayed wonderfully by young actor Léokim Beaumier-Lépine, is smart and sensitive. He writes poetry. He gets along well with his little sister. His family loves him, even if his parents are perhaps a bit exasperated by him. But, the walls of the detention center close in around him, forcing him to believe he has only one way out of all of this: escape, in whatever form that takes.

Knight of Fortune

This is a lovely little film about love, loss, and moving on, told in a darkly humorous style that Danish filmmakers just seem to have a way with. Karl (Leif Andrée) is at the morgue to say his final goodbyes to his deceased wife, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. He meets another man at the morgue who is there for the same purpose. They bond. Lies are told. Antics ensue. And, it’s all tremendously funny and heartwarming.

The film is written and directed by Lasse Lyskjær Noer and produced by the Danish short film master Kim Magnusson. Magnusson, who is not on the list of nominees for this film, has seven previous nominations in this category and two wins, for 1999’s Election Night and 2013’s gorgeous Helium. Knight of Fortune does not quite reach those heights, but it is an excellent effort nonetheless.

Red, White, and Blue

For me, this is far and away the best film of the bunch. Nazrin Choudhury’s short is a superbly executed thriller with amazing performances and a gut punch of a twist that will stick with you long after you see it. Brittany Snow, star of X and the Pitch Perfect film series, plays a single mom in Missouri dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. With her preteen daughter in tow, she scrapes together the little money she can and sets out across state lines to procure an abortion.

The message of the film is clear, concise, and urgent. The anti-abortion laws that are spreading across certain pockets of this country are putting people’s lives at risk, turning necessary healthcare into a harrowing fight for survival. Red, White, and Blue plays less as a warning and more like reportage of the world we have wrought, either through stunning indifference or active ignorance.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

This film played last during the nominated shorts program that played in theaters. As the screening I attended let out, a woman in the back of the theater made a comment to the effect of: Thank god this movie played because the rest were trash and this was art. Meanwhile, I sat there for 39 interminable minutes and marveled at the fact that people sit through whole feature-length movies in this style and claim to enjoy them. To each their own, I suppose.

Backed by the power of Netflix, Wes Anderson crams virtually every word of the Roald Dahl short story on which this is based into the mouths of his actors as they move about the director’s precious dioramas. I walked out of The French Dispatch when it played in theaters, and if this had been one second longer, I might have considered that course of action here, too. Benedict Cumberbatch is fine in this, as is Dev Patel. Even given that, I despised every twee little moment of this movie. But, to each their own.

The final analysis

It’s usually a good idea to point to the short with the most star power when attempting to pick the victor in this category. And, hey, look, there’s one with Cumberbatch, Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes, all working for a big-name director at the one company known for getting short films in front of voters better than any other.

It’s a shame because in a year with a deck that was less stacked, the excellent Red, White, and Blue would have a real shot at the win, but it is almost certainly not to be. It seems that everything has aligned for Anderson, working on his eighth Academy Award nomination, to win his first Oscar.

Will win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Should win: Red, White, and Blue

Should have been here: The Anne Frank Gift Shop

A note about my favorite snub: It may occasionally be a tad on the nose and just a bit too preachy, but Mickey Rapkin’s The Anne Frank Gift Shop sure knows its way around a dark joke. Equal parts lament about the lack of Holocaust education in schools and satire of influencer culture, this black comedy has the style, wit, and performances to stand out among a sea of shorts. Rapkin will be someone to watch in this space.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Live Action 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 Live Action Short

The nominees are:

An Irish Goodbye

Ivalu

Le Pupille

Night Ride

The Red Suitcase

I love this category. Every year, some of the best films in contention at the Academy Awards are nominated in Live Action Short. Three of these – The Red Suitcase, Le Pupille, and An Irish Goodbye – are better films than half of the nominated features this year. Every year, I tell myself I am going to see more short films. I have been lucky enough for the past nine years to live in two cities – New York and Los Angeles – that actually play short films in theaters with some regularity. 

It is a tremendous art form, and of all the categories I am happy to see back on the broadcast after last year’s debacle, this is the one I am most excited for. These filmmakers are craftspeople on par with any working at feature length, and of course, some of these filmmakers have made features, but the point stands. The shorts deserve attention and respect, and including them in the big show is the least the Academy can do.

Le Pupille – My wife found Le Pupille unrelentingly sad. I found it fun and hopeful, with just the right amount of sticking it to the man. This is only to say different people can come away with wildly different feelings about this film. What I don’t think is debatable is that director Alice Rohrwacher imbues this fable with just the right amount of reality to prevent the whimsy from becoming too saccharine.

The film tells the story of a group of young girls at a Catholic boarding school in Italy during World War II. The school exploits the girls for gifts from community members who come by to borrow their innocent souls for personal prayers. Much happens in the film’s 37-minute runtime, the longest of the group this year, and I will leave most of it to surprise. Suffice it to say, I found it charming and invigorating. Your mileage may vary.

An Irish Goodbye – Part of the Green Wave at the Oscars this year of Irish films hitting big with the Academy, including The Banshees of Inisherin and International Feature nominee The Quiet Girl. You may have seen the viral video of a theater full of folks in Ireland watching the nominations announcement and going wild with joy as each Irish nominee was announced. And if there is one thing you can say about this film, it is that it is quintessentially Irish, with pitch-black humor, a morbid fascination with death, and heart to spare.

Directors Tom Berkeley and Ross White tell the story of two estranged brothers, Lorcan, who has Down Syndrome and lives on the family farm with their mother, and Turlough, who moved away some time ago. When their mother dies, Turlough returns to attend the funeral and sell the farm. Lorcan wants to stay on the property and convinces Turlough to help take their mothers ashes around and complete the list of things she wanted to do before she died. It’s a sweet, gentle film with superb performances, and yeah, by the end, I was a little feckin’ misty-eyed.

Ivalu – This short from Danish filmmaker Anders Walter, based on the graphic novel by Morten Durr, follows Pipaluk, an indigenous girl in Greenland whose older sister goes missing. The style is elliptical and impressionistic right up until the last couple minutes when the film overplays its hand and reveals too much. Walter and co-director Pipaluk K. Jørgensen fail to trust their audience, and in so doing, they throw off the tonal balance of the short, which is so spot on for the first three-quarters.

It would be too much to call it an overt misstep since so much of the film is so involving, but it is a surprising miscalculation. Walter previously won this category in 2013 for Helium, a moving fable about the friendship between a terminally ill young boy and a hospital custodian. That was an excellent short precisely due to its subtleties and Walter’s masterful balance of tone. Ivalu falls just short in both those areas.

The Red Suitcase – Women escaping peril is a common plot for short-subject nominees. Just in the past 10 years, we have gotten Just Before Losing Everything, Everything Will Be Okay, A Sister, Take and Run, and now The Red Suitcase. Each of these films is excellent and each story unique, but every one of them takes as its central subject a girl or woman escaping from imminent danger. Something about it preys on an audience’s primal fear, and that kind of immediate tension is key to making a thriller work in such a short amount of time.

Cyrus Neshvad’s The Red Suitcase is a perfect example of this phenomenon, concerning a young girl who arrives at an airport to meet the adult man her father has sold her to for marriage. Her attempts to hide and flee make up the bulk of the film’s brief 17 minutes. We witness the escape entirely from her point of view, and as her options run out, we feel the tightening of the vise, not only from the situation but from her culture. One wishes these kinds of stories were not so prevalent, but as long as we are going to keep getting them, they should all be as expertly crafted as this.

Night Ride – This is the funny one. The funny one rarely wins, but it provides an interesting counterbalance to the sometimes heavy lineup in Live Action Short. Norwegian director Eirik Tveiten’s film follows the story of a woman with dwarfism who boards a commuter rail to get out the cold and accidentally starts it down the track while the conductor is away. Because she is at the controls, everyone assumes she is the conductor and treats her that way.

Meanwhile, a passenger hits on a woman who reveals she is trans, which angers the passenger and he and his friends threaten to get violent. Our lead then has to decide how she will use her newfound power as conductor to handle the situation. Because of the tone of the film, it never feels like anything too terrible is about to happen, but the stakes are very real, and it certainly seems true to the lived experiences of two people who have likely been othered their whole lives. It is ultimately sweet but a bit slight.

The final analysis

Any of Le Pupille, An Irish Goodbye, or Ivalu could win and it would hardly be surprising. An Irish Goodbye won the BAFTA award for best British short film, so there is precedent with a large voting body that shares a good chunk of its membership with the Academy. Walter is a previous winner, and voters may find the conclusion of Ivalu more satisfying than I did. But for the win, I think Le Pupille will be hard to beat.

Rohrwacher is a star on the international cinema scene. Her most recent feature-length narrative film, Happy as Lazzaro, won the best screenplay award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2018, and in 2014, she became only the second woman in the history of the festival to win the Grand Prix (essentially second place) for The Wonders. 

In addition, Le Pupille is produced by Academy favorite Alfonso Cuarón, who would make history if this film were to win. With this nomination, Cuarón tied Kenneth Branagh for nominations in different categories with seven. If he were to win, he would break a tie with Walt Disney for most wins in different categories. Disney won in all three short film categories and Documentary Feature. Cuarón has won Director, Editing, Cinematography, and International Feature.

Speaking of Disney, the last feather in the cap for Le Pupille is that the short is widely available on Disney+ and has the power of a major studio behind it, putting it in front of people and generally making the Academy aware of its existence and pedigree. As we have mentioned before with shorts, big names help, big money helps, and recognition helps. Le Pupille has all three.

Will win: Le Pupille

Should win: The Red Suitcase

Next time: Documentary Short

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Live Action Short

Hungarian film Sing is nominated for Best Live Action 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 Live Action Short

The nominees are:

Ennemis Intérieurs

La Femme et le TGV

Silent Nights

Sing

Timecode

Oscar season is my favorite time of year, and my favorite part of the season, apart from the ceremony itself, is the opportunity to see these wonderful nominated short films in theaters. Every year, the live action, animated, and documentary shorts cited here amaze with their technical wizardry, their storytelling brilliance, and their wonderful craftsmanship.

After a run of five out of six years in which an English-language film has taken home this award, not one of this year’s nominees is in English, happily opening up the category to the best of world cinema. Unlike in recent years, when the quality of these nominees has been consistent across the board, this year, I feel, features films with a greater disparity between the best and the rest. The first three films discussed here are all tremendous, and any would make a fine winner. The last two are more problematic for reasons outlined below. Regardless, this year’s group is as exciting as ever, so let’s dive in.

Sing – Director Kristóf Déak’s drama about friendship, loyalty, corruption, and protest in a Hungarian children’s choir is the most complete film of these five. The script, which Déak co-wrote with Bex Harvey and Christian Azzola, carefully lays in everything we need to know about these girls and their world without hitting you over the head with it.

The subtle writing and tender direction are the perfect instruments to tell the story of Zsófi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi), who joins the school choir but is told to pantomime by the bully choir director Miss Erika (Zsófia Szamosi). Zsófi, devastated, goes along with this order until her new best friend, Liza (Dorka Hais), one of the best singers in school, learns of the indignity. Liza is appalled, and together, the friends form a plot to right this wrong.

The performances by the two young actresses Gáspárvalvi and Hais are stellar and perfectly evoke the feelings of youthful friendship and camaraderie. As you would expect, the use of music throughout is wonderful, capturing the spirit of these girls and channeling childlike joie de vivre. Déak’s stealthy and purposeful directions draws viewers in and sets them up for the film’s climactic confrontation. Though each of these nominees has its own virtues, Sing is the only one among them I would call a perfect film in miniature.

La Femme et le TGV – All that said, to pick one of these for the win, to determine which the Academy might go for, I would have to bet on this sweet chocolate truffle of a film. La Femme et le TGV stars the inimitable actress and performer Jane Birkin as a woman who wakes up bright and early every day to wave happily to the high-speed commuter train that passes by and rattles her house. She begins a pen-pal relationship with the train’s conductor, who drops letters and packages of cheese out the window of the train at 200 miles per hour. This relationship spurs her to break out of her shell and take on the world with renewed passion and vigor.

Swiss writer-director Timo von Gunten crafts a wonderful confectionary delight with this film, showing what happens when we let our routines control us and the wonders that can take place when we finally break those routines. Birkin is as tremendous as you would expect in the role of Elise, who has kept herself guarded so long it shocks her entire community to see her transformation. When the film deals her a decidedly low-key but cruel twist, we are pleased to see her dust herself off and carry on, stronger than perhaps she has ever been.

Von Gunten’s direction is simply lovely, and of all the nominees, this certainly feels the most like a big Hollywood production, the presence of Birkin in the central role only adding to that sensation. The obvious production value, the big star, and the sweet, well-told story all add up to the kind of film that can win big in this category.

Timecode – The Palme d’Or winner for best short film at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, Juanjo Giménez Peña’s sweet, inventively told romance follows the story of two lonely security guards who discover a surprising connection. To reveal that connection would be to spoil much of the film’s charm and heart, so I will say only that it all builds to one of the funniest closing lines of any movie this year. The romance is played beautifully by actors Lali Ayguadé and Nicolas Ricchini, and Peña’s direction is consistently amusing and wonderful.

At 15 minutes, this is the shortest film in the bunch, but it is also one of the most satisfying. The way Peña builds to the climax through repeated shot setups and small visual cues is masterful, and when the film finally breaks form, it is electrifying. A couple of the other nominated films are more topical and a couple are better produced, but for crowd-pleasing entertainment told with a fresh, exciting visual style, it would be hard to beat Timecode.

Ennemis Intérieurs – The most clunky and least cinematic offering in this group, this nevertheless is the most politically charged and socially relevant film cited here. Writer-director Selim Azzazi’s Ennemis Intérieurs, which means literally “Internal Enemies,” concerns a French-Algerian man applying for French citizenship and the government official tasked with his “extreme vetting,” to use the parlance of our time. The man, known only as the applicant (Hassam Ghancy), is questioned about his loyalty to France, his respect for French values, and his ties to the Muslim community.

The film is set almost entirely within two interrogation rooms, aside from a couple artful flashbacks, and consists mostly of the interrogator (Najib Oudghiri) trying to break down the applicant, to push and prod him until his dignity and sense of self have been eroded. It is sickening to watch, and you and I both know such things and much worse are happening right now in this country, which is disgusting. It is an affront to basic human decency, and Azzazi does not so much dramatize it for us as make it real. For what it lacks in cinematic value and subtly, it more than makes up in timeliness and relevance.

Silent Nights – Here is a well-made film with its heart in the right place that I simply cannot endorse. Director-co-writer Aske Bang wants to tell a story about overcoming prejudice and finding connections where we least expect them, both noble goals. Unfortunately, he also engages and depicts every negative stereotype about immigrants he can think of and mixes it with a healthy dose of white saviorism. A movie that for most its 30-minute run time is a charming story about two people from wildly different backgrounds finding love becomes uncomfortable to watch in its closing passages thanks to its inelegant plotting and muddled political message.

Salvation Army volunteer Inger (Malene Beltoft Olsen) meets homeless Ghanaian immigrant Kwame (Prince Yaw Appiah) and the two instantly connect. After their courtship is derailed by Kwame’s life in Ghana, the film kicks into full white-savior mode with Inger coming to Kwame’s rescue. On top of this, Kwame is shown multiple times to be a thief, an opportunist, and a liar, immigrant stereotypes that serve only to reinforce prejudices. There is the hint of a good idea here, and the filmmakers, including producer and two-time Oscar winner Kim Magnussesn, clearly have the best intentions. One only wishes those intentions had translated into a better movie.

The final analysis

Any of these could win. It just depends on what kind of mood the voters are in. They could choose to reward the zeitgeist-capturing social relevance of Ennemis Intérieurs or Silent Nights, or they could go with the well-crafted, well-told professionalism of Sing, La Femme et le TGV, or Timecode. My best guess is the latter will rule the day, particularly the glossy shimmer of La Femme et Le TGV.

Will win: La Femme et le TGV

Should win: Sing

Tomorrow: Best Animated Feature

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Live Action Short

Best Live Action Short nominee Stutterer is a smart, powerful film about overcoming disability.

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 Live Action Short

The nominees are:

Ave Maria

Day One

Everything Will Be Okay

Shok

Stutterer

The Academy likes two things above all others in its live-action shorts: hard-hitting emotion and high production value. If you can combine the two, you have got a nearly sure-fire winner on your hands such as last year’s The Phone Call from director Mat Kirkby – though that film had the added advantage of starring an Academy Award winner and a nominee. Films in the English language also tend to do well, primarily because they make a less accessible category for most members more accessible. Four of the last five winners have been in English.

However, when forced to choose among big stars, big emotions, or big productions, the Academy will almost always go with big emotions as evidenced by the win for Danish filmmaker Anders Walter’s excellent Helium over The Voorman Problem (big stars; in English) and That Wasn’t Me (big production). When it comes to voters marking a ballot days or weeks after they have seen the films, the short that hit them in the heart or the gut is the one they will remember. Only one film this year fits all the criteria we have discussed, but it will have to beat out a couple emotional heavy-hitters.

Day One – This one has it all. Set amid the war in Afghanistan, the production is impressive. Its leads, while not exactly famous, are popular supporting players in a number of well-known projects. And, it has one hell of a story, following a U.S. Army interpreter on her first day in the field. Director Henry Hughes was a paratrooper who did two combat tours in Afghanistan, so the material is close to his heart and has an authenticity lacking in more generic military-set films.

The interpreter, Feda (Layla Alizada), is embedded with a squad sent into a small village to arrest a bomb-maker. When they arrive, the bomb-maker’s wife goes into labor, and due to local custom, Feda, is the only one allowed to be in the room with the woman as she gives birth. When complications with the delivery arise, Feda is also the only one who can bridge the cultural and communication gap in this life-or-death situation.

The film’s ending muddies its gender politics just a bit, but the overall message about understanding different cultures and the universality of people is hard-won. Academy members will likely have a hard time passing up this one with all it has going for it, but its victory is in no way assured, mostly due to this next film.

Stutterer – This Irish drama from nominated director Benjamin Cleary and producer Serena Armitage is smaller in scope than Day One but tighter in its focus. The story follows Greenwood (Matthew Needham) through his daily life as he copes with an almost-debilitating speech impediment. It is impossible for him to speak with the call-center operator about his utility bill, he pretends to be deaf when people on the street ask for directions, and his attempt to stand up for an abused woman at a bus stop is noble but ill conceived.

He seems to have only two relationships in his life – with his kind, patient father (Eric Richard) and a young woman he chats with online, Ellie (Chloe Pirrie). The movie smartly gives us voiceovers from Greenwood in which he shares his thoughts, the things he wants to say but which do not come out that way. Hearing this inner dialogue is key to the film’s message. Greenwood is not slow or mentally challenged. His thoughts are as eloquent and complex as any of ours. He simply has a disability that keeps him from communicating those thoughts.

We see this as well in his online chats with Ellie, but when Ellie suggests they move their Internet relationship into the real world and meet for dinner or coffee, this is Greenwood’s worst fear. He is terrified to see her, perhaps because she will think he is dumb, so he avoids their meeting – the way he avoids calling the utility company or giving directions on the street. In this way, we see how a simple speech impediment – a disability that is invisible to the rest of us – can have life-altering consequences. Stutterer is a gem of a film that wears its heart on its sleeve and could be difficult to resist for the Academy.

Shok – The other film in the lineup, like Day One, with the magical combination of deep human emotions and a large-scale production is this Kosovo War drama from British director Jamie Donoughue. Set in a town torn apart by warring Serbian and Albanian factions, Shok, which means “friend” in Albanian, follows two young boys as they attempt to navigate everyday life amid a tragic, destructive civil war.

Petrit (Lum Veseli) talks his friend, Oki (Andi Bajgora), into giving him a ride on his new bike. The two Albanian boys ride into a Serbian camp and trade cigarette rolling papers for pocket change. We sense quickly the boys are in over their heads in this game. This is not a war based in abstraction but in a deeply held hatred of the enemy. Oki calls Petrit a traitor after Petrit’s operation gets Oki’s bike confiscated by the Serbians, and the basic thrust of the story is how Petrit comes to understand friendship, betrayal, and war at an age when many of us have difficulty with algebra.

Donoughue missteps by bookending his film with brief passages from the present day, but the main action is so compelling it is easy to forgive that small issue. The little details that fill the margins of the story really sell the human cost of the war, and the audience comes to understand just what it means to grow up in wartime. Shok is certainly the hardest of these five shorts to endure from an emotional standpoint, but its payoff packs a tremendous punch.

Everything Will Be Okay – What you think of this film will likely depend quite a bit on your life circumstances. I have no children, and as such, I viewed the events of the film with disgust and anger, seeing a clearly defined right-and-wrong scenario. Perhaps those with children will view the main character’s “plight” with more empathy. I had none.

It would be impossible to discuss further without getting into the specifics of the plot, which I will not do because the dawning realization of what is actually going on is among the film’s chief pleasures. At 30 minutes, Everything Will Be Okay is the longest nominee in the category this year, and German director Patrick Volrath uses the breathing room to build his characters and their world methodically and with purpose. The performances from stars Simon Schwarz and Julia Pointer are excellent, and Volrath has a wonderful command of his storytelling, but this would be an unlikely winner at best.

Ave Maria – The only film in the bunch that could be considered a comedy comes from nominated director Basil Khalil and producer Eric Dupont. Ave Maria tells the story of an Israeli family driving through the West Bank, trying to make it home before sundown on the Sabbath when they get into a car accident outside the home of five Catholic nuns who have taken a vow of silence. It may not sound exactly traditional, but the premise certainly lends itself to comedy, and Khalil has a great eye and ear for where to find jokes in the material.

The tagline on the film’s poster is “Rules are for breaking!” and the message of the film seems to be: What good are all these religious rules and customs if they prevent us from doing the right thing when it comes to helping others? It is a valuable moral and an important question to ask, particularly in times such as these when religion is used to divide people much more than to bring them together.

The film’s tone may make it seem more trivial than the other nominees – and it probably will not win for that reason – but it makes a strong point about the need for compromise and common sense over strict adherence to doctrine.

The final analysis

The shorts traditionally are the hardest category at the Oscars to predict since there are few if any precursors that pit these films against each other, and one never knows how many voters will actually see the movies. As I said at the top, there are some signposts you can look for to see if a film is on its way to a win, but for the most part, we are navigating in the dark. In my opinion, it probably comes down to Day One vs. Stutterer this year, and I am going to give the edge to Stutterer because I think those who see it will be absolutely charmed by it. It is the kind of film people can feel good about voting for, and that never hurts.

Will win: Stutterer

Should win: Shok

Tomorrow: Best Supporting Actress