From the streets of Belgium to the desert of Tunisia, from an orphanage in Guatemala to an apartment in Brooklyn, this year’s Oscar-nominated live action short films manage to take the viewer on a trip around the world in less than two hours. To tell a cinematic story in such a short form and still leave the viewer satisfied is a rare feat, and for the most part, these five films accomplish it. My thoughts on which films most impressed me and which left me decidedly underwhelmed:
A Sister (Delphine Girard)
Nearly 16 minutes of nonstop anxiety, the Belgian short A Sister follows a young woman in danger, Alie (Selma Alaoui), and the woman in emergency services who answers her call for help (Veerle Baetens).
Trapped in a car with a dangerous man behind the wheel, Alie asks the driver for permission to call her sister and instead calls emergency services. To avoid eliciting the suspicion of the man who has taken her captive, Alie must maintain the facade that she is talking to the sister babysitting her daughter while simultaneously telling the operator she is in danger — an almost impossible task, and one that could get her in even bigger trouble if it backfires.
At first Alie’s cryptic responses annoy the operator, but she soon realizes what Alie is attempting to do and begins skillfully asking questions that will help her identify what stretch of highway the car is on so she can send help. The only catch is that Alie must find ways to answer her without accidentally revealing with whom she is on the phone. But there’s only so long Alie can remain on the line before the man behind the wheel figures out the ruse.
A Sister is a masterful exercise in building tension, with an excellent performance by Baetens as its anchor. Girard’s taut direction barely allows the audience a moment to take a breath. Yet the entire time I was watching it my enjoyment was lessened by the feeling that I’d seen this film before, in the form of a superb Danish feature called The Guilty. Released in 2018, The Guilty follows a disgraced cop as he spends the night attempting to trace the calls of a woman in danger, with the added catch that film never leaves the call center where he is stationed. This raises the tension even further — the audience, like the operator, has no idea what is actually happening in the car, leaving room for a shocking twist in the film’s final act. A Sister, on the other hand, takes us inside both locations, the car and the call center, meaning that the only room for surprise is whether or not Alie will make it out alive.
So, while A Sister is a quality film that deserves plaudits for its intensity and execution, the lack of originality in its concept nagged at me throughout. If I did not have the specter of The Guilty still haunting my mind, I am sure I would have enjoyed it more thoroughly.
Brotherhood (Meryam Joobeur)
Brotherhood is a beautifully shot film from Tunisian-Canadian director Meryam Joobeur that explores how the bonds of one family are stretched to the breaking point when the eldest son returns home from fighting in Syria. It’s also the film in this category whose story suffers the most from being told in the format of a short, as I was left wanting much more.
Mohamed (Mohamed Grayaâ) is a shepherd in rural Tunisia toughened by hard work and hardship. His life with his wife and two sons is simple but satisfying. That is, until his eldest son, Malik (Malek Mechergui), returns from fighting in Syria — and with a mysterious new wife in tow. Furious that his eldest son would run away to fight with what he assumes is ISIS, Mohamed isn’t terribly pleased to see him return, even if Malik’s mother and brothers welcome him with open arms. He’s also not pleased to meet the young girl who Malik has taken as a wife, even going so far as to mock her decision to wear the full niqab — an ensemble that he associates with the repression of ISIS and finds distasteful. Emotions slowly bubble beneath the surface in the household until they reach a boiling point and Mohamed makes a major decision that sends the entire family into a tailspin.
The film is gorgeously shot, mostly outdoors in natural sunlight, by Vincent Gonneville, with the camera lingering on the striking, freckled faces of the three real-life brothers who Joobeur cast as Mohamed’s sons. That so many of the main members of the cast are not trained actors only adds to the emotional authenticity of the piece, though the film is carried on the shoulders of an experienced actor in Grayaâ as the family’s misguided patriarch.
At 25 minutes long, Brotherhood is the longest of the five nominated shorts, and yet it also feels too short to properly explore the gravity of the topics introduced by the story. I wanted to spend more time with the characters, especially prior to Malik’s sudden return, to better understand the different emotions fueling their attitudes towards their prodigal son. It’s hard to be properly engaged with the struggles of this family, as compelling as those struggles may be, without being given enough time to get to know them. The good news is that Joobeur is currently working on developing a feature-length version of Brotherhood, and based on the artistic merit of this short, I’m already excited to see it.
Nefta Football Club (Yves Piat)
The second nominated short set in Tunisia is the funniest film in what is notoriously a category rife with dark and disturbing dramas. It’s also my favorite of the group — and not just because I love the sport at its center (though, that helped).
Nefta Football Club opens with two men stumbling around in the desert in search of a missing donkey, worried they’ll miss the big game if they don’t track him down sooner rather than later. Meanwhile, two young brothers biking home with a cart and arguing over who is the better footballer — Leo Messi or Riyad Mahrez — stop to take a bathroom break. The younger brother, Abdallah (Mohamed Ali Ayari) stumbles over the Algerian border so he can step foot in Mahrez’s country, and what does he immediately find? The donkey, of course.
However, this is no ordinary donkey. It’s wearing bulky headphones blasting music, and it’s saddled with bags upon bags of white powder. While Abdallah mistakes the donkey’s baggage for laundry detergent, his older brother, Mohammed (Eltayef Dhaoui), knows better and starts hurriedly unloading the donkey in the hope he can use the stolen goods to make some easy cash. That’s right: the donkey is a literal drug mule.
What happens next — including the explanation for the donkey’s headphones — is absolutely delightful. Miscommunication leads to mishaps, and Mohammed’s plan to profit from the donkey’s baggage goes hilariously awry. It all builds up to a final scene that not only will make you laugh out loud, it will also remind you of the power that the beautiful game holds over fans around the world. While it doesn’t center on issues as serious as its fellow nominees, Nefta Football Club packs more originality and charm into 17 minutes than most feature films can manage — and for me, that makes it the most deserving of an Oscar.
Saria (Bryan Buckley)
Based on a real-life tragedy at an oppressive orphanage in Guatemala, Saria is by far the biggest tearjerker of this year’s nominees. The story of a failed escape attempt by a group of teenage girls and the horrifying events that happened afterward, the film serves as a tribute to their bravery in the face of insurmountable odds.
Saria (Estefanía Tellez) is the younger of two inseparable orphaned sisters living at the Virgen de La Asuncion Safe Home in Guatemala. Her older sister Ximena (Gabriela Ramírez) is starting to attract attention from the local boys and has grown attached to one named Appo (Jorge Ávila), much to Saria’s chagrin; she is still young enough to be jealous of anything who dares to take her sister from her. However, boy talk is a welcome distraction from the hardships they face in their daily lives at the orphanage, including verbal and physical abuse and rape.
With Appo’s help, the girls decide to band together and escape. They launch a full-scale rebellion, chanting in the faces of their oppressors that they won’t be raped anymore, before jumping from a window into a tree and vanishing into the night. However, what starts as an inspirational tale of young women rising up to fight back quickly turns into tragedy when the girls are recaptured. The film literally opens by telling you what real-life tragedy it is based on, so nothing that follows can be categorized as a surprise — but that doesn’t make it any less disturbing to watch. The final scene is absolutely heartbreaking.
Similar to Brotherhood, Saria is beautifully made and packed with great performances from the young actors involved, but one wishes we could have spent more time with the main characters than we are given in this film, which clocks in at 23 minutes. The opening scene, in which Ximena agonizes over a breakout on her face before an encounter with Appo, perfectly sets up the close relationship between the two sisters and reminds us that young girls still will be young girls, even in the face of extreme hardship. I wish director Bryan Buckley had given us more moments like this between the two sisters; from here, the rest of the film plunges into darkness and, for the most part, remains there. Nonetheless, Saria is a fitting elegy for these girls and the tragedy that took their lives.
The Neighbors’ Window (Marshall Curry)
A 21st-century yuppie spin on Rear Window, but with sexytimes instead of murder crimes, The Neighbors’ Window was my least favorite of the nominated shorts. I understand why it appeals to some — it’s a glossy production with good acting and a proper moral to the story — but it fell absolutely flat for me.
The film centers on Alli (Maria Dizzia), a stay-at-home mother of two with a third on the way. She and her record executive husband Jacob (Greg Keller) raise said children in one of the most spacious and beautiful Brooklyn apartments I’ve ever seen; the kitchen alone could practically swallow up my own apartment. As someone who lives in Brooklyn and grows more and more dismayed by the rising rent prices every day, I kept trying to price out the rent for this apartment in my head, and couldn’t settle on a figure less than eight grand a month.
These ramblings about the apartment might seem rather pointless (and a bit bitter, true), but trust me, that’s not the case. After all, the apartment in which Alli and Jacob live is a central character in The Neighbors’ Window. It’s in that apartment that Alli and Jacob realize they can see into the window of a building next door, where an attractive young couple has just moved in. It seems like all their new neighbors do is have sex in a variety of creative positions and throw dinner parties for their equally young and attractive friends, something that both Jacob and Alli find fascinating. However, jealousy of her neighbors’ seemingly ideal existence begins to eat away at Alli — that is, until one day she sees something through the window that reveals her neighbors’ lives aren’t so perfect after all. In fact, they might actually have reasons to envy Alli’s hectic, child-filled life.
The notion that the grass is always greener on the other side is one as old as time — or at least, as old as we’ve been telling each other stories, which must be the beginning of time. The concept itself is evergreen, but the way it is executed in The Neighbors’ Window struck me as heavy-handed and unrealistic; the twist at the end is so extreme that I found myself laughing instead of crying, which was clearly the director’s intent. The characters of Alli and Jacob are more unlikable than they are sympathetic, and I swear that’s not just my jealousy of their apartment talking. Apparently the film is inspired by a true story, and one wonders if that version was more compelling than the one we’re given here.
Conclusion
Oscar nominations across every category are a mixed bag — Joker for Best Hair and Makeup? Really? — so it’s no surprise that the nominees for Best Live Action Short also run the gamut from marvelous to mediocre. My fingers will be crossed for Nefta Football Club, but given the Academy’s love for a good tragedy, I’d put my money on Saria to take home the prize on February 9.
What do you think? Which of these Oscar-nominated shorts sounds most appealing to you? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
You can find screening locations and times for the Oscar-nominated short films here.
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