Where The Holocaust Film Is The Most Lighthearted: 2017’s Oscar Nominated Documentary Short Films

Documentary shorts have a certain freedom not always given to awards-conscious features, though a new trend has emerged in the past couple of years. Namely, their nearly guaranteed obscurity gives them an opportunity to get heeaaavyyyy. Unconcerned with commercial constraints, directors of shorts can really dig into an issue in a way that is both illuminating and concise, resulting in potent examinations with unrelenting honesty. This year’s nominees for best short documentary all take full advantage of that license, and with their curation the Academy, along with the feature documentary category, is making a clear political statement.

If American racism is the issue dominating the full-length category this year, the situation in Syria and the resulting refugee crisis defines the short selections. There are few experiences more arduous than to have than that of a refugee in 2017. People whose lives have been so destabilized by conflict that they’ll risk their lives and those of their families to escape to somewhere that shows them outrageous hostility, but is still preferable to the alternative. With one exception, the nominees all attempt to humanize a population that have been continually demonized at the most desperate moments of their lives.

4.1 Miles

Daphne Matziaraki‘s 4.1 Miles is the most purely experiential film of the group. It follows Greek coast guard captain Christos Sapounas as he serves his duty patrolling the coast of Lesbos, an island in the middle of the greatest migration crisis of the century, which sees over 1,000 people daily attempting risking everything to attain a new lease on life. Matziarki centers her film around one harrowing scene in which Sapounas’ is called to rescue a sinking raft, filled to the brim with refugees fleeing Syria via nearby Turkey. The real time updates over the ship’s radio are delivered with a monotone that belies its severity. Scene such as this have now become unfortunately routine.

4.1 miles is mostly able to sit back and let the events unfold (save for one instance where the cinematographer is implored to help with the effort). The wails of mothers and cries of their children are constant, the emotional toll of just watching this was immense; I can’t imagine the drain of actually being there. The viewer must simply witness this harrowing display of humanity, when she might want to reach through the screen and grab a baby on board from the overstuffed raft below.

It’s definitely chaotic and more than a little overwhelming, but that’s the reality of this situation. The only people for whom it wouldn’t be a paralyzing weight are those who encounter it on a daily basis, and even they struggle at moments. You can see the wear on the captain’s face as his dining companions casually discuss the situation, where he understandably doesn’t feel compelled to contribute. The interview segments that bookend the rescue scene are apolitical on the surface, but you can glean what he thinks from his reminiscing over simpler days.

4.1 Miles is a strong film that implies through images what some of the others express more explicitly: that no one would undergo such a treacherous journey in the hopes of inciting violence or destabilizing a country. The very action connotes a last resort to stay alive. Though unlikely to win in the face of the stiff competition, it remains potent work of humanity and perseverance in the face of despair.

Extremis

Like 4.1 miles, Dan Krauss’ Extremis has to do with individuals who are tasked with facing overwhelming and frankly unfair circumstances on a daily basis. Set at the intensive care unit at Oakland’s Highland Hospital (whose ER was the subject of Peter Nick‘s 2012 film The Waiting Room), the film follows the resident doctors as they interact with terminally ill patients and their families about end of life care. It doesn’t take long before it’s impressed upon the viewer what a monumental task this is to repeatedly ask of person.

The doctors appear unreasonably strong in discussing dire realities, an art that’s part learned bedside manner, part progressive numbing, but follow up scenes in the ICU’s hallways show the immense wear taken. The families get equal time, and all featured seem to have different approaches to how their loved ones will ultimately pass, hitting both ends of the life support spectrum.

The most chilling scenes feature families talking to their ill loved ones, trying to find some semblance of the person they know behind a tangle of tubes. The discussions to which we are witness are ones rarely heard until you deal with them personally, and I have a strong feeling of gratitude to the subjects of the film for sharing these most intimate moments in such a public way. The conversations between physicians on the ethics of various courses of action offers insight into the care process and refreshingly demonstrates that each patient is considered and thought over as individuals.

This is a really tough watch, especially if you’ve ever sat by a loved one’s deathbed. There’s really no conversation more serious than whether or not to keep someone alive. Because of its considerable heft and it lying outside of the clear theme of the nominees, I don’t think it has a shot at winning, but it is a film that undoubtedly will stick with you, even if you might prefer that it didn’t.

Joe’s Violin

A touching New York story of arts, immigrants, and inter-generational affection, Joe’s Violin is the brief respite in the program from the onslaught of warranted depression. So it’s no small irony that the main subject of the film is a holocaust survivor. Joseph Feingold donates a violin, for which he traded a carton of smokes in a displaced persons camp in Siberia during WWII, to a school which exclusively serves the children of immigrants, where learning violin is built into the curriculum. 12-year-old Brianna Perez is selected as the student whose passion and dedication to the instrument earns Joe’s Violin, so that it could be cherished by and inspire a young person as it had over half a century prior.

Director Kahane Cooperman spends much of the film getting Joe’s story down for posterity. His memories of a family torn apart by war never to be made whole again, followed by his resettling in the US, will immediately recall the refugee focus at the heart of the fellow nominees. But when Joe’s Violin really shines is in the meeting of its two protagonists. It’s hard not to be taken with Joe and Brianna, who both feel such sincere emotion about this instrument and harbor great mutual gratitude for what the other has given them. The film reaches a stirring climax when Brianna plays for Joe, on the violin he used to play and still clearly cherishes, a song his mother used to sing.

A straight forward but moving film with hefty doses of sentiment and allegory, Joe’s Violin seems almost a token inclusion, nominated to keep Academy members and audience goers from slitting their wrists halfway through the program. As such I don’t see it winning the night, but it will always have inherent value as a document of an individual’s account of a story often told from a macro-perspective, and a testament to the value of immigrants to America.

The White Helmets

Opening on a black screen, the sound of an explosion immediately thrusts us into the chaos following a Russian bombing raid, dust still hanging in the air. This is how we are introduced to The White Helmets, as many Syrian civilians are, in the midst of chaos. A volunteer rescue crew, Syria Civil Defense, whose eponymous nickname is taken from their signature headgear, takes it upon themselves to rush into piles of concrete and twisted rebar to rescue those caught underneath. Always the first on the scene, the sound of jets overhead is all that’s needed to initiate a mad scramble; they know an attack is imminent and that their services will be needed imminently.

Orlando von Einsiedel’s camera is right there among the madness, becoming a sort of de facto first responder. These scenes, though filled with carnage, offer some hope in detailing White Helmet’s actions, as opposed to wide shots which shows Aleppo as the grey, bombed out wasteland it’s become where seemingly none could flourish. This could be viewed as a metaphor for the rampant Islamophobia in the West, which generalizes based on what’s seen from afar, never taking into the account individuals who can only be known up close. This is probably why Einsiedel chose to intersperse the direct footage with interviews of some of the volunteers, to share their insights and reasons for doing what they do, reflect on the horrors they witness, and break up monolithic perceptions. It does hurt the pacing some but it’s effective in these aims.

In the film’s later half a team of white helmets travel to Turkey, where they will be trained on advanced rescue methods for the future, but in the meantime are tragically unable to help those left back in Aleppo. Artful parallel editing during this sequence, recalling the climax of The Godfather, mixes carnage with prayer putting a fine point of the opposing forces at play. Here is the rebuke to those who claim Islam is the religion of terror.

The White Helmets is a tribute to the dangerous work whose execution has cost many lives, but has saved an unfathomable amount more. I believe it’s in the top two most likely to win the Oscar, and there’s no doubt that recent controversy about whether the film’s subjects can attend the ceremony will further bolster its profile. In fact, I’m thrilled that as I’m writing this it was announced that they, in fact, will be there. If you need a recommendation for your Oscar pool this would be a safe bet.

Watani: My Homeland

Typically, given the immensity of the crisis, contemporary documentaries focusing on refugees usually choose to highlight one aspect of the crisis, such as camps or vetting. Watani: My Homeland, in its relatively brief run time, is the most complete account yet of their journey. Beginning in Syria and ending in Germany, Marcel Mettelsiefen spent three years following a family as they are violently forced from their home and face the unknown in a quest to regain some semblance of normalcy.

Mettelsiefen‘s simple approach is both removed and elegant, allowing the story to organically take shape, in bad times and good. In Aleppo we see how conditioned the children are towards war, playacting atrocities and possessing an uncomfortable ability to determine whether a sound originated from a bomb or missile, or if one was launched and didn’t explode. With a civilian rebellion, even these young girls are targets.

As the years continue along with the war, the family faces extreme sacrifices, ultimately fleeing to Turkey in hopes of immigrating to Germany. In their adopted homeland, the mother is baffled by the notion that Europeans would be suspicious of all Muslims’ intentions, as they are the one the terrorists are killing most. To see their transition towards true normalcy after witnessing what they considered to be inherent to life is a moving and unique cinematic experience.

I hope Watani is the winner on Sunday. Straight forward, honest and even featuring glimmers of hope among hard realities, it is not only a great film but, like all the films in this program, a direct response to to unreasonable hatred that has somehow crept into official policies.

Conclusion

Documentaries attempt to offer some kind of representation of reality, and given the world in which we live, it’s little surprise that these five films were recognized as 2016’s standouts. Like some film festival programmers, the Academy has chosen a group of films that exist in clear opposition to the new administration. Extremis, though the thematic outlier, is allied with its fellow nominees in resistance, begging the viewer to recognize the value of our physicians in a time when the future of the American health care system is a complete unknown.

As someone whose documentary tastes tend to lean away from issue-driven films, I have some mild misgivings about the emerging trend. But recognizing documentaries’ importance as verifiable and independent sources, presenting stories with minimal mediation, I’m also…excited isn’t the right word…but confident that the future for non-fiction films of all lengths will be strong. They are doing what they’ve always done, revealing, reacting to and forming new paradigms. But in this world, unable to pull itself out of this seemingly ceaseless descent, it’s probable that their tone will be increasingly and defiantly of the moment.

Which Short Do You Think Deserves to Win?