They Shoot Oscar Prognosticators, Don't They?
Handicap of the Short Films
By J. Don Birnam
February 10, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com

And that is a black square!
Let’s take a break from The Revenant, Spotlight and The Big Short and look at the three categories that can win you your Oscar pool outright. The animated, live action, and documentary shorts is where new and innovative filmmakers test the waters. They are, by far, the three hardest categories to predict. They have been the difference between a losing and a winning Oscar ballot many a year. As I explained last year, the best way to do predictions there is to cross off the ones without a chance. Indeed, last year I went 3/3. This year, I feel much less confident—there is no clear consensus or movie that stands out. So caveat emptor (I say that every year—I hate prognosticating these!).

The handicap of the technical races so far is here and here. Twitter and Instagram have additional content.

Best Animated Short. For the life of me I can’t make heads or tails of this race. Any one of the five has a real shot this time around. There is no clear, knock-me-down entry. Most are predicting Sanjay’s Super Team, the Pixar/Disney entry that screened ahead of The Good Dinosaur. But Pixar entries tend to lose here, not win, except for last year’s Feast. This time, the short, which focuses on an Indian boy and his fantasies about superheroes while his dad is teaching him to pray, is not as aww inducing as the movie about the cute dog. Still, it has a definitive heart, so perhaps the other pundits are right.

I would discard the violent and graphic Prologue, which is beautifully drawn but does not seem to have a cogent point in its gruesome battle scenes. And while the Russian entry, We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, the story of two astronauts and the bond they form, also has a heart, it is perhaps too stoic to take the top prize.

In any other year, I would have picked Bear Story, the touching film about a bear who is captured by circus masters and separate from his family, for the win. Past wins for shorts like The Lost Thing indicate the branch likes emotional pieces with complex animation. I may still go for that one in the end. Finally, the very quirky and witty The World of Tomorrow may also have a chance, at least as the smartest of the bunch. The animation is dominated by line-drawn characters, however, so that may be a detriment. Still, it just won a prize for the Animators Guild, Annie, so that’s a good sign for it.

My gut is between World of Tomorrow and Bear Story.

Best Live Action Short. Everything from quirky, artsy fare to serious or gripping pieces have won since I’ve been following the shorts. The branch always does a great job of selecting variety here, and this year was no different.

You can probably discard Austria’s Everything Will Be Ok. It has been accurately described as a soap opera episode, and I cannot really disagree. It tells the story of a desperate farther who plans to kidnap his daughter during one of his scheduled visitations, and how the plans go awry when his flight is coincidentally cancelled. The strongest part of the movie is the performance by the daughter. The movie is gripping and interesting, but a similar movie two years ago, Just Before Losing Everything, ended up a runner-up. Most problematic is that the ending felt staid and flat compared to the intensity of the rest of the movie.

I also did not think that Palestine’s Ave Maria has a chance. It follows a Jewish family trapped in the Arabic side of the West Bank after their car breaks down, and their attempts to seek help from a group of Catholic nuns who have taken a vow of silence. This is the quirky, funny movie of the bunch but, again, the ending feels something flat and uninteresting compared to the comedic aspects of the movie.

Probably next to go would be the British The Stutter, the story of a young man with a serious speech impediment and how his world is upturned when the woman he’s been chatting online with for six months decides to visit him. There is evidence for a past win like this, like God of Love a few years back. Watch out for it as a potential spoiler.

My own favorite was Day One, the American entry, which follows an American-Arabic interpreter on her first day of duty with the Marines, and the challenges she faces on that first day—including having to deliver the baby of a bomb maker’s wife. The movie is touching, gripping, sad, and uplifting at the same time. It would get my vote in a heartbeat, even though it follows some predictable twists and obvious emotionally manipulative points.

But the smart money this year is on the Serbia Shok, the only one of the five to have won awards at other festivals outside the Oscars. The movie centers on an Albanian man who, upon finding a bicycle on the road, has a flashback to a horrible episode in his youth when the Kosovar war uprooted him, his family, and his life, from home. In his close friendship with another young boy, the child experienced youth, loyalty, friendship, and tragedy. It is the tightest of the film, and by far the most upsetting at the same time. This will likely win.

Best Documentary Short. The group is solid, taking us from Vietnam to Pakistan to France to Liberia, as well as America.

You can discard, I think, Claude Lanzman: Spectres of the Shoah, a movie about the making of the Holocaust epic, Shoah. The movie is an interesting analysis of the Shoah director, the challenges he faced in making the film, and the lessons he learned in the process. It would be tempting to say “oh, Holocaust movie, therefore it will win,” but the piece is more about the director himself. The movie he made, in turn, ended up being ten hours long. For that reason, it feels as if the short could have been a feature length documentary. There was enough interesting material that it felt weak in this format.

I’m also not sure about Last Day of Freedom, a hand-drawn documentary that focuses on a man who is guilt-ridden after having turned in his brother for committing murder, and the brother was ultimately executed in California. Of the five, this one brought the tears to most people’s eyes in the room. It is a moving film that raises questions about the death penalty, veterans’ health, racial justice, etc. But I’ve never seen a movie that focuses on a one person interview win here, let alone one that focuses on his voice, with only animated images of him to guide us along. It’s artsy, so I’ll give it that, but, again, artsy is not as rewarded in this more “serious category.”

It gets tricky from here on out. I’d probably discard Chau: Beyond The Lines next. This movie follows a Vietnamese teenager born with severe physical impairments due to in utero exposure to Agent Orange. The movie has disturbing images of other children being cared for in a special hospital, and follows Chau’s moving journey from despair to hope as he becomes an artist, despite his disabilities. It is tempting to compare this to past winner, Inocente, which featured a homeless young woman and her journey to fame through art, but the movie does not have the emotional punch that the little girl’s smile packed. Still, given that win in the past, a win by this movie is not out of the question.

I was personally more moved by Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness, the story of a woman who survives an attempt on her life by her own father after she marries without his permission, a so-called “honor killing” in Pakistan. She lives, with severe deformities to her face, and is forced by the elders in her community to “forgive” her assailants, which will allow them to walk free, so that there is peace in the community. The criticism of religious extremism, oppression of women, and arcane values makes it one of the most relevant of the films. It would probably get my vote, and it has that Saving Face aspect of creating sympathy for a woman with a disfigured face. (Note: after writing that last sentence I went online and, lo and behold, the Oscar winning documentarian behind Saving Face is indeed the maker of Girl in the River. Will the branch give her another Oscar? The entire Academy votes on these, but my understanding is that most don’t vote unless they see all the movies, under the honor system, so I expect most votes to come from within the branch.)

More pundits are picking Body Team 12 for the win, the documentary which focuses on a woman that works as a body remover for the Red Cross at the height of the Ebola crisis in Liberia. The obvious reason why this movie could win is because it has the one with the clear hero you want to root for—she is brave and risking her life, in the face of community ostracizing and resistance—to serve others. Past wins from the aforementioned Saving Face to the Crisis Hotline winner last year point in this direction. The only problem is that the movie is very short—only 13 minutes long, shorter than all live action movies—which may cost it some votes.

I’ll predict Body Team 12 with a potential spoiler by Girl in the River.

Next, we will look at the other feature length films—Animated, Documentary, and Foreign Language. All three have clear frontrunners. After that, the home stretch.