Oscar-nominated live-action shorts grapple with fraught sociopolitical issues

Los Angeles Times

12-02-2025

The five Oscar-nominated live-action short films each tackle urgent sociopolitical issues. By placing us in the shoes of people on the front lines of them — even in a sci-fi pseudo-comedy — they promise to shake viewers.
Sophie and Oscar have been together for years. They're married, they have a young daughter. But Oscar came to the United States as an undocumented immigrant and when he arrives for a required interview at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office to establish his green-card status, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are arresting those answering the summons. At its core, says Sam Cutler-Kreutz, the tense and frantic 'A Lien' — inspired by a New York Times article — is 'a horror film about documents.'
Cutler-Kreutz, who co-wrote and co-directed with his brother, David, laments a 'Kafkaesque' immigration system labyrinthine enough to confuse native-born Americans, much less noncitizens attempting to follow the rules to gain legal status. 'We've built this process that is fundamentally for humans but is strangely inhumane.'
The title protagonist in 'Anuja' is a 9-year-old orphan living with her young teen sister in Delhi, surviving by working long hours in a garment factory.
'Child labor is not an Indian problem alone,' says filmmaker Adam Graves. 'It exists on all continents in every country, right here in California as well; right here in Los Angeles, for that matter.'
When Anuja has a potential way out of squalor, the choice isn't so simple; she also has to think of the possibly dire consequences for her beloved sister.
'It's easy to kind of wag your finger and say, 'Go to school, Anuja,'' Graves says. 'I've tried to tell a story that complicates it and [respects] the decisions a lot of kids and their families who live in abject poverty are faced with on a daily basis.'
Victoria Warmerdam's 'I'm Not a Robot' starts from a humorous premise — what if you fail the test posed by online-verification programs — then shifts to its potentially serious ramifications.
'As a female, bodily autonomy is always a question in terms of some other people' accepting it, says Warmerdam, acknowledging it among the many other questions the scenario raises..
'It really resonates with people who are neurodivergent and are not fitting in,' she says. 'There's something off [with the world], but they can't describe it. I have two neurodivergent brothers. So this film and my two previous films are about outsiders.'
Rhinoceros poaching in South Africa is a serious issue that 'The Last Ranger' puts into sharp focus, highlighting the dangers not just to the endangered animals but to the humans who try to protect them.
When the project began, writer-producer Darwin Shaw says, 'It was more a cartel story, but we honed it down into a woman's story.'
Shaw and actor David Lee recruited Lee's sister, Cindy, a veteran director, to make the film about a young, impoverished girl who goes with a brave, mother-figure ranger on patrol, with tragic consequences.
'It's so much bigger than somebody taking a horn off a rhino,' the director says. 'The communities sometimes have no other source of income, and that's a very big problem.'
An ordinary man is traveling by train with his two young daughters. It stops unexpectedly and armed men with a paramilitary unit begin questioning passengers about their religion … and taking passengers away. A nervous young man in their compartment admits to them he doesn't have his identification papers. What can the father do? It's 1993 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The quietly tense 'The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent' puts us very uncomfortably inside an infamous incident in the Bosnian War, when one man (Tomo Buzov) made a momentous decision.
'What he did is something that needs to be remembered,' says writer-director Nebojša Slijepčević. 'He was sort of a forgotten hero for political reasons that may be too complex to explain now because it's very local Balkan stuff. He did not fit any of the nationalistic narratives.
'I recognize something very universal in this situation, when you witness violence that is not intended against you, you're just a witness and you must decide what to do in this situation. Do you ignore it or do you react and risk your safety? There is no easy way out.'