Review: We watched all 15 short films nominated at the 2025 Oscars. Here's what should win

Los Angeles Times

14-02-2025

If you want to ace your Oscar pool, you musn't ignore the three short film categories — animation, live-action and documentary. But what cinephile would, anyway? The 15 nominees here have already won something, if you think of them as global ambassadors of all that cinema can do in a pinch of time. They will compete on Hollywood's biggest night but, of course, we have our favorites.
This year's solid animation bunch splits neatly, between flummoxed kids with hope and injured adults trying to cope. Among the former, Loïc Espuche's French charmer 'Yuck!' depicts consensual kissing as a pink, sparkly tell on people's lips, which creates an inconvenient problem for any kid disgusted by adults smooching but secretly interested in trying it. Veteran Japanese animator Daisuke Nishio's stop-motion fantasy 'Magic Candies' gives lonely boy Dong-Dong a bag of the title sweets, each briefly making a part of his world less silent, as his own outlook becomes more appreciative and confident. Enough optimistic voters could land either of these films the statuette.
But something tells me our battered mood will see a winner in something like gifted ironist Nicolas Keppens' 'Beautiful Men,' a quirky tale of three balding Flemish brothers visiting foggy Istanbul for hair transplants. It makes brilliant use of the tactile intimacy of stop-motion, perhaps the only appropriate style considering this trio's crippling insecurities. Another possibility is 'In the Shadow of the Cypress' from co-directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, who follow last year's first appearance in this category by an Iranian filmmaker (Yeghane Moghaddam with 'Our Uniform'). Their color-coded tale of a traumatized war veteran, his concerned daughter and a beached whale is evocative and unsentimental.
An isolating unease and satiric TV nostalgia mark Dutch filmmaker Nina Gantz's Roald Dahl-meets-Adult Swim curio 'Wander to Wonder,' about the tiny human stars of a cheap children's show, fumbling through survival in their disused studio after the demise of their creator. In its bleakly funny mix of world-building by way of world-decaying, it memorably reclaims the term 'suspended animation,' and is resonant enough to win.
The live-action entries, meanwhile, look at dangerous situations — some ripped from real life. South African Cindy Lee's semimelodramatic but effective poaching parable 'The Last Ranger' sends a wide-eyed village girl with a love of rhinos into a wildlife preserve, where her encounter with a friendly female ranger leads to a violent revelation about protection and endangerment. From India (and American producer Mindy Kaling) comes philosopher-turned-filmmaker Adam J. Graves' refreshing 'Anuja.' It tracks the spirited bond between the title character, a 9-year-old, and her older sister Palak, smart girls navigating the strained opportunities available to them. Fleet and amusing, alive to childhood's exploratory nature, it also regrettably cedes dramatic ground at a curious point.
Weightiness isn't a problem for either 'A Lien,' from writer-directors Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz, or Dutchwoman Victoria Warmerdam's 'I'm Not a Robot.' The former brings crackling Paul Greengrass-like energy to a young family's engagement with America's bait-and-switch immigration system. The latter — as if Maren Ade had made a 'Black Mirror' episode — takes Captcha technology to an eerie omega point for a young office worker (superbly played by Ellen Parren). It's a feminist nightmare for her character — and a darkly tingling identity comedy for us.
The standout, though, and probable winner, is Nebojša Slijepčević's masterfully tense Bosnian war vignette 'The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent,' set in the grim complacency of a train compartment. As the space is searched by a paramilitary group, a young Muslim man's fate is bystander fodder for all but one passenger. Though a true story, the stripping away of historically specific details is part of the film's power: It feels disturbingly relevant.
Over in the short documentaries, films tackle legacies of violence or, in the case of 'Instruments of a Beating Heart' and 'The Only Girl in the Orchestra,' the sweeter strains fostered by music. The delightful 'Instruments,' from Ema Ryan Yamazaki, takes us inside a Tokyo school where second graders form a percussive orchestra, learning about blending their nervous internal rhythms into the stuff of communal performance.
'The Only Girl,' meanwhile, is Molly O'Brien's loving portrait of her groundbreaking aunt, 89-year-old double bassist Orin O'Brien, the New York Philharmonic's first female orchestra member, handpicked by Leonard Bernstein himself. She's self-effacing, charismatically nerdy and loved by colleagues and students. It's a superlative biodoc fueled by how effortlessly O'Brien radiates the soulful bonhomie we want to imagine courses through all those dedicated to a life in art.
Grace exists in the more severe stories too. Kim A. Snyder's 'Death by Numbers' centers on the expressive healing process of Sam Fuentes, a Parkland, Fla., school-shooting survivor, as her assailant's trial nears. Texas' Death Row is where Smriti Mundhra's heavy, heartfelt 'I Am Ready, Warden' finds uncommon ground shared by a condemned murderer, a reform-minded local DA and the son of the victim, torn by unresolved feelings. It potently argues that, in some cases, the death penalty only kills positive change.
But the most deserving short, 'Incident,' by never-before-nominated found-footage master Bill Morrison ('Dawson City: Frozen Time'), reveals the limits of accountability. The film is a real-time montage from publicly released police body-cam and surveillance videos of a Chicago officer's fatal shooting of a Black pedestrian and the chaotic aftermath. From synched split-screen images, we absorb the excruciating minutes that barber Harith Augustus' body lies unattended, while becoming privy to the closed-ranks crafting of a justification. On the other side of the yellow police tape, a gathering chorus of a besieged community shouts the truth like a commentary track they know will never be heard.
Chicago's latest police union contract revoked the public use of their body-cam footage. 'Incident' infuriatingly uncovers why.