Doc Short Contenders Give Voters Plenty to Ponder
The 15 films that made the shortlist in the Oscars’ documentary short category are all powerful and thought-provoking, making the competition for an Academy Award nod incredibly stiff this year.
Leading the charge are “Incident,” “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” “The Quilters,” “Death by Numbers” and “Keepers.”
The first 89 seconds of Bill Morrison’s police brutality doc “Incident” is silent. Security footage captures a street in Chicago on a July afternoon in 2018. Minutes later, a man is dead. Through a series of recordings of CCTV and police bodycam footage captured from different vantage points, Morrison offers a raw look at the Chicago police shooting of an unarmed Black man. The 29-minute New Yorker film won the best short documentary award at the 2023 IDA Documentary Awards and garnered a spot on the influential DOC NYC shortlist earlier this year.
Netflix’s “The Only Girl in the Orchestra” and Jenifer McShane’s “The Quilters” were also selected for the DOC NYC short-doc shortlist this year.
In the 34-minute doc “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” director Molly O’Brien spotlights trailblazing double bass player Orin O’Brien, the first woman hired by the New York Philharmonic. Executive produced by Errol Morris, the film captures the 87-year-old musician as she looks back on her remarkable life and career. McShane’s 31-minute “The Quilters” follows men in a Missouri Level 5 maximum security prison as they create quilts for foster children. The film, which premiered at DC/DOX earlier this year, beautifully examines how an art form can change an individual and how they view themselves and others.
Equally compelling is Kim A. Snyder’s “Death by Numbers,” a poignant look at gun violence in America. The 33-minute doc, which premiered at the Hamptons International Film Festival, follows Samantha Fuentes four years after being shot with an AR-15 during the Parkland High School shooting. Fuentes reckons with existential questions of hatred and justice as she prepares to confront her shooter. Interweaving Fuentes’ poetry and her shooter’s sentencing trial that will determine whether he lives or dies, the doc depicts a young woman reclaiming her power.
In Hannah Rafkin’s 39-minute “Keeper,” a single father and beekeeper in the Bronx who is dealing with a cancer diagnosis and balancing his daughter’s needs, cares for 16 hives across New York City, including several inside his apartment. Rafkin, a School of Visual Arts student, won the Student Academy Award for “Keeper” in October.
Other notable contenders include Rashida Jones and Will McCormack’s POV short “A Swim Lesson” and Julio Palacio’s Netflix doc “Makayla’s Voice: A Letter to the World,” which was executive produced by Oscar-winner Roger Ross Williams.—Addie Morfoot
‘Death by Numbers’
Live-Action Oscar Hopefuls Leave Viewers With Powerful Messages
This year’s zeitgeisty live-action short Oscars lineup is heavy on social issue stories, spine-tingling thrillers and examinations of identity.
Marco Perego’s “Dovecote” stars his A-list wife, Zoe Saldaña, marking their second collaboration following “The Absence of Eden.” Shot in B&W, the atmospheric prison drama was a standout at Venice and HollyShorts.
A bettor’s favorite, Nebojsa Slijepcevic’s Palme d’Or winner, “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent,” tells the true story of one man who stood up to paramilitary forces in an ethnic cleansing operation in Belgrade.
Álex Lora’s “The Masterpiece” won best short at Berlin and the short film grand jury prize at Sundance. It examines Spain’s economic culture gap and uneven attitudes towards immigrants based on nationality.
Adam J. Graves’ HollyShorts winner “Anuja,” about child labor in India, has big-name EP backing from Oscar-winning Indian producer Guneet Monga Kapoor and Hollywood power player Mindy Kaling.
Victoria Warmerdam’s Brussels, Sitges and Fantasia-winning Dutch lo-fi sci-fi short “I’m Not a Robot” plays out like a peak episode of “Black Mirror.” A feature adaptation is in the works.
“Paris 70,” by Spanish director Dani Freixas, is a relatable take on Alzheimer’s, as seen from the POV of the victim’s son and caregiver. Jean de Meuron’s “Edge of Space” boasts “Top Gun”-worthy VFX that would make most big-budget features blush. “A Lien,” about a young couple’s struggles with a dangerous immigration process, is the latest work from on-the-rise filmmaking brothers Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz.
TJ O’Grady-Peyton’s “Room Taken,” about an unhoused Nigerian immigrant who rooms with an elderly blind woman, received a significant celeb endorsement when Colin Farrell joined as EP. Mohammed Almughanni’s “An Orange From Jaffa,” about a cab driver and his Palestinian passenger looking for a ride to the Israeli border, won the international competition at Clermont-Ferrand.
Robert Moniot’s “The Ice Cream Man” tells the true story of a Jewish ice cream parlor owner after the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands. Cindy Lee’s “The Last Ranger,” the second film in a proposed anthology, is the story of a young girl and a park ranger ambushed by poachers on a wildlife reserve.
Portia A. Buckley’s HollyShorts best shot on film winner “Clodagh” tells the story of a priest’s housekeeper who discovers a young girl with an exceptional gift for dance. Two student Academy Award winners made this year’s main competition shortlist, Pavel Sýkora and Viktor Horák’s “The Compatriot” and Jens Kevin Georg’s “Crust.”——Jamie Lang
Oscars’ Animated Short List Is All About the Indies
Fifteen films representing 13 countries have made this year’s Academy shortlist for best animated short.
This year’s qualifying field is noteworthy for its lack of studio-backed titles, A-list star producers or celebrity voice talent. The 2025 race will be a showcase for truly independent animation.
Perhaps the most mainstream of this year’s nominees is “Me” from indie superstar Don Hertzfeldt. A two-time Academy Award nominee, the filmmaker has long been one of the web’s favorite animators and helped define early internet animation history with the viral short “Rejected.” He was most recently nominated by the Academy in 2016 for his short “World of Tomorrow.”
Canada’s Torill Kove will be looking to score her fourth nomination with “Maybe Elephants,” which screened in competition at Annecy, Berlin and Toronto. Kove has previously received Oscar nominations for “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts” and “Me and My Moulton” and won a golden statue in 2007 for “The Danish Poet.”
Another strong contender is “Bottle George,” from former Pixar animator and Oscar-nominee Dice Tsutsumi. In 2015, his dialogue-free short “The Dam Keeper” was nominated.
“Percebes,” the 2024 Annecy Cristal-winning best short from Portuguese filmmakers Alexandra Ramires and Laura Gonçalves, follows up a previous shortlisting for Gonçalves’ “The Garbage Man,” on which Ramires worked as an animator.
A promising trend that can be found in recent Academy voting history is an increased recognition of up-and-coming student filmmakers. For the second year in a row, Student Academy Award-winning films have been shortlisted for the main competition: This year, the titles are “Au Revoir Mon Monde” by Astrid Novais, Florian Maurice, Quentin Devred, Maxime Foltzer, Estelle Bonnardel and Baptiste Duchamps at France’s Ecole MoPA, and “Origami” by Kei Kanamori, a student at Tokyo’s Digital Hollywood University.
Other titles in this year’s race include Alexandra Myotte and Jean-Sébastien Hamel’s Ottawa and SXSW award winner “A Crab in the Pool”; Iain Gardner’s “A Bear Named Wojtek”; Nicolas Keppens’ Annecy double-award-winner “Beautiful Men”; Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi’s “In the Shadow of the Cypress,” the second Iranian film to make the animated short shortlist in the last two years; and Daisuke Nishio’s magical realist CG short “Magic Candies.”
Rounding out the field are Tod Polson’s “The 21,” animated by a global team of more than 70 artists; Nina Gantz’s SXSW Grand Jury Award-winner “Wander to Wonder”; Anna Samo’s innovative Woodstock winner “The Wild-Tempered Clavier”; and Loïc Espuche’s Berlinale standout “Yuck!”—Jamie Lang
