Films from Norway, Luxembourg, Greenland, Italy, and Ireland compete in the 95th Academy Awards, creating a realm where complex stories are told in compact spaces.
The best live action short film category is just like the featured category — only shorter!
It’s always worth keeping an eye on the nominees and winners of this category. In the past, Martin McDonagh – who’s feature The Banshees of Inisherin is up for nine Oscars this year – won his first Academy Award his short film Six Shooter.
Prior to Fish Tank and American Honey, Andrea Arnold won for Wasp. Future Doctor Who Peter Capaldi directed and won for Franz Kafka’s It’s a Wonderful Life in 1994. Other nominees include Taika Waititi, Lexi Alexander, Kenneth Branagh, Peter Weller, and Susan Seidelman.
Running anywhere between 16 and 38 minutes, the nominees this year tackle immigration, forced marriage, sin, grieving, family trauma, and transphobia.
The Red Suitcase
The premise is simple: a veiled 16-year-old Iranian girl (played by Nawelle Evad) is reluctant to take her titular suitcase through security and out into the terminal. Director Cyrus Neshvad almost challenges you to make some assumptions, just so they can subvert them immediately.
The charged situation doesn’t quite go where you think, with the young girl trying to avoid the man she arranged to be married. Shot in and around the departures area of Luxembourg’s airport, Neshvad builds tension as she tries to slip away.
In fact, it’s tense as all hell, and while there are some familiar themes at play, the final shot is quite striking.
Le Pupille
Possibly the only Live Action Short Film Nominee that you can see in 4K DolbyVision on a studio streaming service?
Set during a time of war and scarcity, it follows a group of girls in a convent. Under the strict eyes of the Mother Superior, the girls skirt the lines of Catholic notions of ‘good’ and ‘evil’ — especially when there is a 70-egg cake on the table.
As charming as it is beautifully shot, this satirical piece shows how the ‘good’ can be viewed as ‘wicked’ by the righteous, and the latter do ‘wicked’ things in the name of piety. Best thing of all: it’s a secret Christmas movie. Don’t know about the rest of you, but I could really go for a cup of tea and a slice of cake about now.
Ivalu
You don’t necessarily see a lot of films coming out of Greenland. In Anders Walter and Pipaluk K. Jørgensen’s short film follows a young girl searching for her titular missing sister against the backdrop of an icy tundra and an indifferent father.
The photography is gorgeous, the performances earnest, and — for the most part — maintains an intriguing narrative based around one or two characters. The reveal in the back half, as many have pointed out here, takes this into some more familiar territory. Indeed, it would be generous to say it all feels a bit Very Special Episode.
One can imagine this has been flagged for the award for the film techniques and not necessarily the subject matter, but the selections this year are curious to say the least.
An Irish Goodbye
Between The Banshees of Inisherin, The Quiet Girl and this, a new short film from Ross White and Tom Berkeley, Ireland is having quite the year at the Oscars.
On a farm in Northern Ireland, estranged brothers Turlough (Seamus O’Hara) and Lorcan (James Martin) come together over the death of their mother. Turlough worries that Lorcan, who has Down’s Syndrome, won’t be able to cope on his own. Yet Lorcan is determined to get through a bucket list their mother penned before she passed.
In the end, it feels like a concept that is yearning for a bigger canvas. Indeed, I would not be surprised to see this expanded into feature length if it wins (or even if it doesn’t). If that does happen, here’s hoping they don’t recast as the chemistry between O’Hara and Martin is wonderful. It’s sweet, funny, and charming and one of the best of the nominees.
Night Ride
One has to believe that Eirik Tveiten’s short film started with the best of intentions. On the surface, it’s a film that covers transphobic harassment.
It certainly gives the audience pause for thought. When the lead steals a tram for a joy ride, she is confronted by a group of men harassing a trans woman. The lead doesn’t react initially, playing on the very real phenomena of apathy witnessed in wider society. Tveiten encourages the viewer to ask what they would do in the same situation.
There’s some fairly strong reactions strong reactions online against this film, specifically surrounding the exploitative nature of the content. On the one hand, an exploration of transphobia and bullying is timely. Yet that narrative, some have argued, only exists here to serve the story of the cisgendered lead. That it intersects with ableism is barely addressed.
At the time of writing we can’t possibly know if this will win., but that it was nominated is a further indictment of how far the Academy (and cinema more broadly) needs to go when discussing representation and inclusive narratives.
Catch the Oscar Shorts (animated and live-action) at cinemas 10,11 & 12 March.
Locations and session details at: https://shorts.tv/en/events/oscar-shorts-2023
