Short films rarely get the attention they deserve, but this year’s Oscar nominees are impossible to ignore, writes Film News Blitz writer Jesse-Ann Baron.
The true underdogs of the film industry are short films.
They never get the same amount of hype as any feature film nor the same level of respect.
There’s no press tour, no poster and they seldom trend on social media.
But, that gives them the ability to be bold and fearless with their storytelling.
Every single frame has to count, they have no time to build emotion – this pressure produces some of the most precise and powerful filmmaking in the industry.
This is not a lesser format and this year’s nominees are an amazing collection spanning animation, documentary and live-action all of which deserve far more love.
‘The Girl Who Cried Pearls’ – Best animated short winner
The Girl Who Cried Pearls is the kind of animated film that reminds you why the medium exists.
The Canadian stop-motion short took the directors, Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, five years to produce a 17-minute film.
They were unconventional in that they used handmade puppets combined with 3D printing to create a stellar animated gothic fable.
The film begins with a grandfather who after catching his granddaughter trying to steal a pearl in his study, begins sharing the haunting origin story of the precious pearl to her.
We are transported to 20th-century Montreal and we follow an orphan boy who notices a neighbouring girl that cries pearls.
Overwhelmed with sorrow
She is mistreated by her stepmother and every night she is overwhelmed with such sorrow she weeps and throws her tears away.
The boy, who loves her, sees this and creates a lucrative business by selling the pearls.
He is eventually conflicted as making money off the back of a poor girl’s sorrow eats away at him.
Ultimately the film is about how greed can corrupt even good souls.
The craftsmanship and the labour that went into hand crafting not only the puppets but by making the sets landscape out of either recycled or scavenged waste is remarkable.
This animated short film won the Oscar because every single aspect of it was made with heart, everything down to the heartbreaking one-string piano soundtrack.
You will find The Girl Who Cried Pearls is available on YouTube for free and this short film has a way of sticking with you long after it’s through.
‘Butterfly’ – Animated short film
This Oscar nominated film is not fiction but retells the real life of Jewish Olympic swimmer Alfred Nakache.
Nakache competed in the 1936 Berlin Olympics and is a survivor of the Holocaust.
Butterfly is an actual work of art in that it looks like a painting in motion as the director Florence Miaihle did just that.
Each frame was handpainted sequentially by Miaihle on glass and canvas and was modified as the film went on without relying on computer animation.
The animated paint allowed the fluidity of water and the changing tides of memory.
Nakache’s life is shown to be tied to water, so the film uses the dissolving textures of paint to represent the flashes of memory that would ordinarily return to an elderly man.
It shows flashes of his memory as he, now an old man, reminisces about the past as he swims in the ocean.
All his memories anchored by water are shown from the first time he swam as a scared boy to the time he met his wife.
Grief and trauma is represented through the changing colour palettes and textures which gives a beautiful dignity to his suffering at Auschwitz and his healing afterwards.
Defied the odds
He defied the odds by breaking a swimming world record in less than a year after surviving the death camps.
This heartbreaking short film is a true piece of art and an inspiring true story of resilience
There is no explanation, similar to memories or dreams his life is shown and how even after losing his whole family he kept on going like a butterfly-forward and back.
The 15-minute film is available on Youtube for anyone to access which means there’s no excuse not to watch Butterfly.
‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’ – Best live-action short winner
This is quite a peculiar film set in a dystopian future, where kissing carries the penalty of death.
The film ironically is set in Paris, the city of love, at a time where romantic touch is illegal and currency is inflicting pain.
In order to buy items a consumer would pay with pain in the form of a certain number of slaps by the retailer.
The strangeness broadens as in this future society potential romantic interest is actively deterred by everyone not washing their teeth, consuming garlic and undergoing breath checks.
Unhappy rich wife
The film is centred around an unhappy rich wife who has a forbidden romance with a store salesgirl.
It is shot in sharp black and white with marvellous angles and compositions – with the rules of the dystopian society never explained.
This film demands you to feel uncomfortable and not to turn away from it but to sit in the discomfort which is rewarding by the end.
The unique storyline is critiquing agency, intimacy and what do governments take away from the ordinary persons when they criminalise the most natural human impulses.
This year’s live-action short films were so strong that it tied with the great short, The Singers, making it the seventh time this has happened in the 100th year history of the Oscars.
Go check out the 36-minute dystopian short on YouTube, be prepared to be confused, intrigued and appalled at the same time.
‘The Singers’
A poignant story that mixes music, comedy and drama to produce a short film that touches the heart with ease.
The film takes place in a bar full of old regulars, all men who are lonely and out of the spur of the moment start a singing competition.
The unexpected show serves as a deep moment of emotional release and brotherhood.
It’s a simple film at first glance but it is rich with layers of emotions that are somehow relayed and felt within 18 minutes.
This is refreshingly sweet with ordinary people finding much-needed joy in a small moment.
It is a modern adaptation of a 19th century Russian short story of the same title.
Genuine viral singers
Interestingly the actors were not found conventionally but the director scoured social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram to find genuinely viral singers.
The cast was made up of actual street buskers which gave the film its realism.
The film is very gritty with its dim lighting and grimy look to it but it is oddly intimate with tight close-up shots, heavy silences and space.
The harsh setting of a rough bar contrasts beautifully with the deeply intimate camera framing of the emotional vulnerability of the men.
It is surprising that The Singers tied with Two People Exchanging Saliva given how totally different these two films are in every aspect.
You can find this 18-minute masterpiece on Netflix and you might watch this film more than once just to hear the beautiful singing again.
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‘All The Empty Rooms’ – Best documentary short winner
This film is beyond gut-wrenching as it shows the side of school shootings that aren’t seen and that’s the empty rooms.
CBS reporter Steve Hartman shares his seven-year broadcasting essay in the form of a documentary.
Over almost a decade Hartman has returned to the empty rooms of the children who tragically lost their lives in school shootings in America.
Hartman aims to prevent Americans from becoming desensitised to the horrors of these shootings.
He seeks to angle the focus away from the shooter and completely on the victims.
We follow him as he visits his last four rooms for his broadcasting essay.
How was ‘All The Empty Rooms’ shot?
Hartman has photographer Lou Bopp document and memorialise the personal bedrooms of the victims.
This took years of building trust with the parents to even gain access to these sacred spaces.
The film focuses on the children’s frozen lives and the untouched rooms of four children are focused on in the film.
The camera forces the audience into these lives by letting it linger on small details like purple hair ties on the door knob, letters written to future self and Spongebob figurines.
We get a glimpse into the immense grief left behind in the parents and siblings who loved them.
The children’s ages range from six years old to 14 and this made it not an easy watch but a necessary one.
It is deeply unsettling, heartbreaking but impossible to look away from with Hartman even noting that if every American could stand in one of these rooms for a few moments, he is certain the country would be different.
Only 33 minutes long, All The Empty Rooms can be found on Netflix – this film is important and has a lot to say about the real state of the world.
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