The Best Live-Action Short Oscar Nominees Go Against the Grain

Not all Oscars categories are created equally. If you’re keeping up with our current awards cycle, you’ve most likely seen or at least heard of the feature-length films nominated at this year’s Academy Awards. Unless you’re a committed film buff, you’re likely less familiar with the short films that are being considered. It certainly doesn’t help that the Oscars chose not to televise the presentation of these categories last year.

Thankfully, though, all 23 categories will be broadcast during Sunday’s ceremony, including Best Live-Action Short.

The financial and temporal constraints of short live-action movies can be a turn-off. They rarely have recognizable stars (unless, of course, you’re Taylor Swift casting a music video you refer to as a short film for artistic purposes). But this particular medium is often where some of our favorite feature-length filmmakers get their start. (Current Best Director nominee Martin McDonagh won his first and only Oscar for his 2004 short film Six Shooter.) So why not get on board with these up-and-coming geniuses (or total flops) early on?

Speaking of flops, the winners for Best Live-Action Short in recent years have been… puzzling, to say the least. At the 2021 ceremony, the truly awful film Two Distant Strangers, about a Black man stuck in a time loop where he’s killed repeatedly by a white cop—during his final death, his blood spills out in the shape of Africa—won the prize. Two years earlier, Academy voters decided that Guy Nattiv’s Skin, another hate-crime story that ends with a group of Black men tattooing a white man’s entire body the color black as an act of revenge, was worthy of Hollywood’s biggest honor.

Luckily, this year’s nominees are mostly good if not great and certainly less clumsy in their delivery of political messages. I highly recommend finding a ShortsTV showing of all of the live-action (and animated) shorts at a theater ahead of the Oscars, if possible. At the very least, you can check out one of the nominees, Le Pupille, on Hulu and Disney+.

An Irish Goodbye

Let’s start with the short that Variety has favored to win. I’m going to assume that all the Irish representation at this year’s ceremony has something to do with this film’s odds of winning, despite it being the fifth-best film amongst the nominees.

Directed by Tom Berkeley and Ross White, An Irish Goodbye is a heartfelt story about two brothers, one with Down Syndrome, who have just lost their mother and are conflicted about their next steps as a family. When they discover their mother’s bucket list, they bond by completing the various activities, holding a vase of her ashes. Her instructions, which we hear through a voiceover, eliminate the unnecessary tensions often heightened by grief.

I would kindly compare this film to an elongated life insurance commercial. The occasionally funny dialogue and chemistry between actors James Martin and Seamus O’Hara is its main selling point, while the normalized depiction of Lorcan, the differently abled younger brother, is genuinely refreshing. Other than that, this film mostly earns its points in sincerity. For me, it’s a bit too saccharine.

The Red Suitcase

The less you know about The Red Suitcase, the better, as this 18-minute thriller unfolds in the most nail-biting way. In the first couple of minutes, a hijab-wearing Iranian girl nervously informs her father that she’s arrived at an airport over the phone. A red suitcase pulls up alone on a conveyor belt in a foreboding fashion, making you instantly curious about its contents (and possibly playing into prejudiced audience members’ worst assumptions). However, the urgency with which the main character protects her luggage is both a red herring in the story’s puzzle-like narrative but also key to her mission throughout the film.

Understanding that The Red Suitcase is written and directed by men, I’m curious about interpretations of the character’s removal of her hijab and how it related to her independence. Nonetheless, it’s hard to deny the film’s effectiveness as a well-paced thriller and, obviously, its timeliness, as the women’s movement in Iran rages on.

Night Ride

Night Ride, directed by Eirik Tveiten, has a similarly charming, whimsical tone as An Irish Goodbye, before a frightening interaction disrupts the film. A little person named Ebba (Sigrid Kandal Husjord) casually hijacks a tram after being dismissed by the driver while he’s taking a break. The passengers she picks up include a group of obnoxious bros and a transgender woman. Unfortunately, I don’t have to explain how this turns out.

What unfolds is a lesson on bystander apathy and solidarity amongst marginalized communities. It helps that the main character is systematically oppressed in her own way, narrowly avoiding the trope of the cisgender savior. By involving herself in the conflict, she’s putting herself at risk as well. This reality, that oppressed people can only really depend on each other, is frustrating but reveals a beautiful commonality when it happens.

Night Ride is streaming on The New Yorker Screening Room.

Le Pupille

From Yes, God, Yes to Lady Bird to Madeline, stories of Catholic girls defying authority have proven to be delightfully entertaining and politically potent throughout the years. Produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alfonso Cuaron, Le Pupille (The Pupils) is another rebellious tale about an all-girls boarding school run by a no-nonsense nun. The rich visual palette of this film, including even its costumes and food, is what separates it most from its fellow nominees. Shot on 35 mm, director Alice Rohrwacher recreates the warm, fuzzy aesthetic of an Italian neorealist film and arranges scenes in a particularly mesmerizing way. There’s a shot of the girls dressed as cherubs, recreating a nativity scene of sorts, that I wanted the camera to stay on forever.

The film has the sort of innate charm I think An Irish Goodbye tritely manufactures. However, given Rohrwacher’s previous success at film festivals and a co-sign from Cuaron, I doubt Rohrwacher needs the boost of an Oscar win to secure future opportunities. This offering certainly made me want to check out her previous work.

Le Pupille is streaming on Hulu and Disney+.

Ivalu

Anders Walter and Pipaluk K. Jørgensen’s Ivalu undoubtedly provokes the biggest emotional response out of all five nominees. An adaptation of the graphic novel by Morten Dürr and Lars Horneman, the film follows a young Inuit girl in Greenland, who discovers (or maybe just remembers) that her sister is missing. Her father’s reaction, once she informs him at the start of the film, is key to the gut punch you feel once her sister’s whereabouts are revealed.

I can see some viewers dismissing the film as trauma porn, given that its last few minutes are difficult to sit through. But Invalu’s acknowledgement of highly documented but oft-ignored issues facing women and girls within the indigenous communities feels urgent and necessary. And it depicts these experiences in a careful, non-gratuitous way.