I Am Big. It's the Pictures That Got Small
An A-list invasion into Oscar's three short-film categories stands to upset the domain of the up-and-coming filmmaker
If you’re hoping to win your office’s Oscar pool, forget second-guessing the top of the ballot. After Oppenheimer’s win at the Producer Guild of America Awards this weekend, its best picture victory looks all but assured. Instead, move to the bottom of the ballot where the three short film categories sit.
While some have argued that the short-film categories should be dropped from the broadcast in order to streamline the show, so far, the Academy has resisted that move. In fact, the Academy just appeared to give live-action shorts an added vote of confidence by dividing its Short Films and Feature Animation Branch, which has overseen both live-action and animated shorts, in two. Going forward, there will be an Animation Branch and a Short Films Branch, which will have individual responsibility for the animated shorts and live-action shorts, respectively.
With the short categories very much in play this year, if you want to win that office pool, figuring out the appeal of the nominees in the three categories is key. Although most of the films may be unfamiliar to casual viewers, there are some recognizable names — Wes Anderson, Sean Lennon, Sheila Nevins — that could impact the outcome.
Live-Action Shorts
One of these things is not like the others.
There’s only one basic requirement for a live-action short film vying for an Oscar: It has to be 40 minutes or less. As a result, the films in this category typically play like modest, closely-observed short stories — quickly introducing a sympathetic protagonist, establishing a central dilemma and then offering a tidy and often emotional resolution.
This year, though, one of the five films does a whole lot more than that. Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar stands out from the crowd, easily eclipsing the other four nominees in terms of its starry cast and aesthetic ambition. Based on a 1977 short story by Roald Dahl and produced by Netflix — Netflix acquired Dahl’s literary catalog for $686 million in 2021 — the film offers up a series of stories nestled within stories, beginning with narration served up by Ralph Fiennes as Dahl himself. He recounts the tale of a rich gambler, Henry Sugar, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who learns from a doctor (Dev Patel) of a circus performer (Ben Kingsley) who was taught by a yogi how to see with his eyes shut. After spending years mastering that trick, Sugar himself becomes an unbeatable gambler before eventually deciding to use his new-found talent to become a globe-trotting philanthropist.
Following in the steps of his recent feature-length cinematic confections like The French Dispatch and Asteroid City, Anderson has his characters address the audience directly as they walk through constantly shifting painted sets that open up like the pages of an elaborate picture book. “I hope that you like it. And if you don’t, that’s okay because it’s very short,” Anderson said as he introduced the film at last year’s Venice International Film Festival, where the movie premiered to a reported four-minute standing ovation.
By contrast, the categories’ other four nominees dramatize much simpler stories. Misan Harriman’s London-set The After provides something of an acting showcase for David Oyelowo, playing a man trying to live with unbearable grief. The Canadian short Invincible, directed by Vincent Rene-Lortie and inspired by a true story, focuses on a tortured teen trying to escape incarceration. Knight of Fortune, from Danish director Lasse Lyskjaer Noer, is set in a morgue where a man, fearful of viewing his dead wife’s body, strikes up an unexpected friendship. Finally, Nazrin Choudhury’s Red, White and Blue follows a single mother as she attempts to scrape together money for an out-of-state abortion.
Given this year’s lineup, Academy voters faced an interesting question as they marked their ballots. Over the years, the prize has gone to filmmakers just beginning directing careers. Think Taylor Hackford, Christine Lahti, Andrea Arnold and Martin McDonagh. But as established directors have turned to short films in recent years, the voters haven’t been as inclined to reward their efforts. Pedro Almodovar’s last two short films — The Human Voice, starring Tilda Swinton, and last year’s Strange Way of Life, starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal — made the branch’s shortlist of 15 films but failed to secure a spot as one of the five nominees. Last year, Le pupille, directed by Italy’s Alice Rohrwacher (Happy as Lazzaro) and produced by Alfonso Cuaron, made the cut by earning a nom but then missed out on the ultimate prize.
The question now is whether this year voters are willing to hand an A-list filmmaker the prize for directing a short. If Henry Sugar were not in the equation, a film like Red, White and Blue — which not only serves as a protest over the growing restrictions on abortion in the U.S. but which also has a dramatic third-act twist which makes its heroine’s dilemma all the more poignant — might be considered a likely front-runner. But in terms of its bravura film-making, Henry Sugar will be hard to ignore. Because Anderson has been nominated for seven other Oscars — for writing, directing, producing and the animated films Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs — without being invited to the stage for a win, the Academy also has an opportunity to rectify that oversight by presenting him with the Oscar for live-action short.
Animated Shorts
This year, there are no entries produced by either Walt Disney Animation Studios or Pixar in the mix. Surprisingly, Disney’s Once Upon a Studio, in which dozens of Disney’s animated characters gather for a group photo to celebrate the studio’s 100th anniversary, didn’t make it into the circle of nominees (though it was shortlisted). Although it was heavy on nostalgia and cleverly recreated both the look and sound of its beloved characters, voters perhaps dismissed it as too much of a promotional vehicle.
In any event, with Disney and Pixar out of the picture, that should make for a more wide-open field than usual. But there’s still one animated film — War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko — that could elevate itself above its competitors.
As a group, this year’s nominees fall on the artier side of the animation scale, playing more like visually-arresting tone poems than cute toons. Tal Kantor’s Letter to a Pig explores the haunted thoughts of a young girl as she listens to a Holocaust survivor describe his experiences. Jerusha Hess and Jared Hess’ Ninety-Five Senses visits the thoughts of a death row inmate, voiced by Tim Blake Nelson, as he looks back on his life. Yegane Moghaddam’s Our Uniform offers up a young girl’s reflections about her school days in Tehran. Stephanie Clement’s Pachyderme tells of another young girl’s visit with her grandparents, a storybook-like idyll that turns into a nightmare.
But it’s War Is Over! that rolls out the big guns — metaphorically and literally. The setting is a World War I battlefield on which two soldiers, on opposing sides, play a game of chess with the help of a carrier pigeon. The game, interrupted by a call to battle, ends when the war is declared over. Directed by Dave Mullins, a former Pixar animator and previous Oscar nominee for the 2017 short LOU, the film was willed to life by Sean Ono Lennon, who serves as executive producer. Having recruited Mullins, cofounder of the new animation house ElectroLeague, Lennon then turned to Peter Jackson, director of the 2021 documentary The Beatles: Get Back, whose visual effects company WETA FX collaborated on the project. Thomas Newman, who boasts 15 Oscar nominations, agreed to compose a score for the film, which culminates with John and Yoko’s peace anthem “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).”
That all amounts to something that the boomers among the Academy’s membership could find hard to resist.
Documentary Shorts
The nominees for best documentary short film feature a big name as well. Sheila Nevins, the former president of HBO Documentary Films who now heads MTV Documentary Films, makes her directorial debut with The ABCs of Book Banning. Inspired by news footage of a 100-year-old woman protesting book banning at a Florida school board meeting, Nevins, 84, decided to take on the issue herself. While highlighting the dozens of books that have been restricted or banned across the country, her film introduces new voices into the conversation by interviewing a series of 10- and 11-year-olds, who make a lot more sense than many of their elders. By tackling a hot-button topic, the film speaks with a sense of urgency that could galvanize Oscar voters.
But it faces some stiff competition from a group of equally compelling films.
Sean Wang’s Nai Nai & Wai Po serves up plenty of heartwarming charm as the filmmaker looks in on his two grandmothers, who live together — Nai Nai, 86, and Wai Po, 96, who stole some of the spotlight when they appeared together at the recent Academy luncheon. In just 20 minutes, S. Leo Chiang’s Island in Between deftly explicates the complicated history between Taiwan, the United States and China by visiting the island of Kinmen, the Taiwanese island that sits just offshore the Chinese mainland. John Hoffman and Christine Turner’s The Barber of Little Rock profiles Arlo Washington, an entrepreneurial barber who’s established both a barber school and a non-profit to provide loans to local businesses in an attempt to address the racial wealth gap.
Closer to home, Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers’ The Last Repair Shop zeroes in on the Musical Instrument Repair Shop, which maintains and restores the instruments used free of charge by students throughout the Los Angeles Unified School District. The film, from Searchlight and L.A. Times Studios, features interviews with both the shop’s expert craftsmen, who reveal their highly personal stories, and some of the students who have benefitted from their work. The film, which ends on an emotional high note as past and present students join forces for an orchestral finale, has already had some impact. On Feb. 20, the Los Angeles Unified School District Education Foundation, with support from the Ely and Edythe Broad Foundation, announced a $15 million capital campaign to support the shop and a student apprenticeship program.
In announcing the initiative, Superintendent Alberto M. Carvalho said, “Ben and Kris’ film has created extraordinary excitement and support, and the time has come to call on forward-thinking leaders in this city to ensure that no child in Los Angeles who wants to play an instrument will ever be denied that opportunity.”
So, at least in the case of The Last Repair Shop, an Oscar would just be the icing on the cake.
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