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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.

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