Short of the Week
The start of a new year means many different things for people around the world, but in the film world, it means festival and award season. While we closely monitor unfolding developments in both realms, the Oscar ceremony on Sunday, March 10th, stands out as the highlight for the industry and for fans.
In the domain of feature films, a plethora of other award shows like guild awards or the Golden Globes can serve as a reasonably indicative (albeit not flawless) predictor of how the Academy might allocate its awards, but when it comes to short films, no equivalent benchmark exists. Therefore, as part of our annual Oscars coverage, we’ve compiled this guide, where we assume the role of a voter to pick the shorts we believe deserve advancement to the next phase—the nominations.
**View all 45-shortlisted films on Shortverse**
The voting period kicks off today, Thursday, January 11th, and concludes on Tuesday, January 16th. During this time, the initial 45-film shortlists will be whittled down to 15 – five in each of Best Animated Short Film, Best Documentary Short Film, and Best Live-Action Short Film. Selecting S/W’s category picks are our Senior Programmers, Rob Munday, Céline Roustan, and Jason Sondhi. You can peruse their selections below:
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The Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film
While we commended the Best Animated Short Film category last year for the number of independent productions included in the shortlists, the winner — The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy and Matthew Freud — felt like a predictable pick. This year’s 15-film shortlist once again contains a solid mix of festival favourites, familiar names from the short film world, and the occasional studio film. The Academy deserves praise for the category’s evolution which is popularly attributed to the expansion of membership and an emphasis on diversity—what was once an award often predictably claimed by a major studio (Disney, for instance, secured four wins in seven years) has now become a genuine showcase for some of the finest work in this field. We don’t oppose a studio film winning the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film, it just needs to be truly deserving – a criterion that hasn’t always been met in the past.
Narrowing down the selection from 15 films to just five was a challenging task, and while I regret excluding the Estonian legend Priit Tender (Dog Apartment) from this list, here are my final five picks. – Rob Munday
 | 27 by Flóra Anna Buda Winner of awards at Annecy and Cannes, 27 comes to the Oscars riding a wave of hype. Often that type of praise can feel hyperbolic, but in the case of Anna Buda’s film, it’s richly deserved. An erotically charged short driven by some vivid animation and a dreamlike narrative approach, this is the type of filmmaking that proves animation isn’t just for the kids. |
 | A Kind of Testament by Stephen Vuillemin Vuillemin’s unique short takes a little time to suck you in, but when it does, it may well be one of the most captivating and unsettling short films I’ve seen in a while. The story of young woman who comes across animations created from her private photographs online, A Kind of Testament’s surreal concept is amplified by some unforgettable animation. It’s the kind of film that refuses to leave your headspace days after watching. |
 | Letter to a Pig by Tal Kantor A captivating, powerful narrative brought to the screen with Kantor’s trademark style (mixing animation with live-action), Letter to a Pig is an ambitious piece that delivers on its aspiration with incredible impact. Another festival favourite, Kantor’s short won awards at Anima, Ottawa and Zagreb and should be a strong contender to make it through to the nominations. |
 | Our Uniform by Yegane Moghaddam The most inventive piece of craft on the shortlist, Moghaddam’s exploration of the clothing conventions imposed on young children tells its story through an animation approach that uses garments from the wardrobe as its canvas. From trouser legs to dresses and hijabs, the playful use of textured backgrounds adds a fresh new angle to the story without it ever feeling gimmicky. The storytelling here is good, but it’s the craft that moves it to a whole other level. |
 | Pachyderme by Stéphanie Clément My personal pick from the 15-title shortlist and one of my favourite animated shorts of recent years, Clément’s Pachyderme is a film that delivers in both the aesthetic and narrative departments. Brimming with atmosphere and tension, this is a short that haunts with its story and captivates with its visuals. An unforgettable piece, Pachyderme won awards at Annecy and Zagreb. |
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The Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film
Who will emerge as the successor to The Elephant Whisperers, winner of the 2023 Best Documentary Short Film Academy Award? Among the 15-shortlisted shorts competing for a nomination it has become customary to spot “the usual suspects” such as Disney+, ESPN, HBO, Netflix, Paramount+, PBS, POV Shorts, The LA Times, The New Yorker or The New York Times as big-pocketed media companies behind many of the titles, but this year a couple of films managed to be included without such big supporters. We’re excited to see S/W alums Sean Wang, Geeta Gandbhir, and Ramin Bahrani included, and it wouldn’t feel like the Oscars if multi-nominee and recent-winner Ben Proudfoot (this year back with Kris Bowers, who he worked with on A Concerto is a Conversation) wasn’t present. I’m not an Academy member, but if I were to pick five films to progress, it would be these… – Céline Roustan
 | Black Girls Play: The Story of Hand Games by Joe Brewster & Michèle Stephenson Using archival footage and testimonies, directors Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson explore the roots of hand games, going back generations, in this ESPN contender that qualified at Tribeca – where it won the Best Documentary Short award. Touching on many topics, the film manages to remain a light-hearted watch, but as Black culture historically hasn’t gotten its proper dues, this film is also inherently powerful and important. |
 | Camp Courage by Max Lowe The story of Milana, a young girl displaced by the war in the Ukraine, and her trip to an Austrian summer camp with her grandmother, Netflix is known for pushing the emotional angle of their documentaries, but here Max Lowe makes sure we get to know the participants before getting to the tough part of their story. This approach gives the film a very personal angle, which ultimately becomes universal when the topics of trauma, war, and resilience are addressed. And yes, I did cry! |
 | How We Get Free by Samantha Knowles & Geeta Gandbhir In this HBO doc, S/W Alum Geeta Gandbhir teamed up with Samantha Knowles to chronicle the life of Elisabeth Epps. As we get to know Epps and her mission and tag along on her journey as an activist, although the film isn’t the most innovative in terms of structure, the directors follow their subject with the utmost care and sensitivity. The surprising ending wraps the film on a hopeful note. |
 | Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó by Sean Wang Big festival favorite, and an absolute favorite of mine, Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó began its journey at SXSW 2023, where it won the Grand Jury Prize & the Audience Award, and was later acquired by Disney. S/W alum Sean Wang is back with an incredibly touching documentary where he turns the lens on his two grandmas, hijinks ensue. Shot and produced by S/W alum, Sam Davis, the film is full of energy and love, leaving you feeling all warm inside. |
 | Ours (Bear) by Morgane Gaëlle Frund This is the biggest and most pleasant surprise of all three shortlists for me, as Morgane Frund’s Berlinale 2023 short Ours (Bear) has been around the festival circuit, but hasn’t played much in North America and doesn’t have the backing of a Hollywood giant. Smart, clever, and compelling, Frund approaches the question of gaze and voyeurism with honesty, prompting a genuine reflection in this captivating doc. |
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The Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film
In contrast to the Animation category which is trending towards an ever more accurate accounting of the best work each year, and Documentary which, if not celebrating the most innovative filmmaking is, nonetheless, highlighting major works that have been vetted by the most prominent organizations within its discipline, the Live-Action category is more of a mess than ever. We often grumble about this category, but this feels like a nadir.
I am too much of an outsider to the Academy and its processes to diagnose its ills or recommend remedies, but this 15-film list is, frankly, embarrassing. I recognize that the Oscars did not ask to become the most prominent award in short film, but that is what it is, and there should be a responsibility to craft a process that rewards excellence. Instead, it feels like the system has been gamed and is now a solved problem for teams that are knowledgeable enough, rich enough, and motivated enough. More films are bypassing festival qualification, festival qualification itself has swelled, and the majority of these projects rely on a celebrity connection. Short of the Week is a place to celebrate shorts so I will not speak ill of any individual film, and to be fair none of the 15 films are wholly inept or deserving of opprobrium on an individual level, but collectively this list is not the best our medium has to offer. – Jason Sondhi
 | An Avocado Pit by Ary Zara Pretty Woman meets Before Sunrise in this Portuguese romance as a trans woman sex worker charms a hesitant but curious man. Featuring a beguiling turn by Gaya de Medeiros as the lead, while it often feels that these types of representation films are meant for normie audiences, the camera of director Ary Zara—themself a non-binary trans person—is never leering, and the interplay of characters is witty enough, playful enough (and sexy enough) to gloss over its more didactic aims. In a list that is unusually bland visually, the film, which picked up awards at Clermont-Ferrand and Palm Springs, also possesses uncommon style for a directorial debut. |
 | Die unsichtbare Grenze (Invisible Border) by Mark Gerstorfer Three Gold medal recipients at this year’s Student Academy Awards made the shortlist (Boom and Wings of Dust were the others) but Mark Gerstorfer’s social issue drama from Austria’s Filmakademie Wien, is the only one we recommend proceeding to a nomination. The story of a police unit carrying out a deportation order in the middle of the night, the film is a series of tense vignettes and effectively, without undue drama or sentiment, communicates the great theme of the genre—how the stories of individuals are ground up in the machinery of institutions and how the humanity of those charged with the grinding becomes compromised. |
 | The One-Note Man by George Siougas Quirky and sentimental, this film from television veteran George Siougas doesn’t reinvent the wheel nor is it to my tastes, but is told with defined skill and intention. The story of a bassoonist responsible for only playing one note in each night’s performance and who lives his life in a similarly limited and regimented routine, the film is more broadly about being stuck in a rut and discovering the courage to pull oneself out of it. Featuring an extremely short voiceover from Sir Ian McKellan, the more pertinent creative partnership is with Oscar-winning composer, Stephen Warbeck, who provides the music. |
 | The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar by Wes Anderson The most high-profile and widely watched film of all 45 on the shortlists, Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl adaptation is also simply one of the best. Dealing with beloved source material, Anderson nevertheless elevates it to even greater heights via his trademark production design and his obsession with storytelling frames and artifice. To this point, the narrative structure of the plot jives well with his renewed obsession with stories within stories (most prominently displayed in his recent feature, Asteroid City). While an outlier in a category known for heralding unknown talents, the film is a major work from a major filmmaker and is deserving of more than a footnote within the auteur’s celebrated filmography. |
 | Yellow by Elham Ehsas An Afghani who moved to the UK when he was young to avoid the Taliban, Ehsas is a celebrated actor who is also a growing talent behind the lens. We featured his prior short, Our Kind of Love, which portrayed a refugee’s first date in her new country, and Yellow similarly focuses on Afghani women, casting Afsaneh Dehrouyeh once again as the lead. In the film a woman shops for her first full-body veil now that the Taliban have regained control of the country. The scenario is blunt and the plot is without much complication, but by focusing on the repressed emotion and subtext of his actors Ehsas is able to produce moments of magic. Also, in a list full of films pushing 30 minutes, it is a blissfully concise 11 minutes long. |