2026 Oscar Nominated Short Films Live Action

I completed my viewing of all the Oscar Nominated Short Films with the Live Action Shorts. They varied from the amusing to the absurd.

The strangest short by far is the French entry, Two People Exchanging Saliva by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh. It is a disturbing story taking place in a dystopian future. Most of the film takes place in a high-end department store where the employees must have their breath checked upon entry to make sure they are not brushing their teeth. The customers pay for their purchases by being slapped in the face by the salespeople based on the price of their goods. In this world kissing is prohibited and anyone caught is put to death and the body placed in a cardboard box that is discarded in a pit. In the story a young salesgirl connects with an older woman customer with the two playing a game pretending that they know each other. This type of behavior is forbidden. It is filmed in all black and white using creative filming techniques to create dread and confusion. It’s a story about denied intimacy and casual violence.

From Israel comes a story about prejudice called Butcher’s Stain by Meyer Levinson-Blount. It features a young Palestinian man working in an Israeli market as a butcher. It takes place during the Gaza war, so tensions are high between Palestinian and Jewish people who share the same space. The story centers on false accusations made against the Palestinian butcher by one of the Jewish co-workers and his efforts to defend himself. The story seemed a little flimsy to me with some unnecessary scenes. It was not my favorite.

2026 Oscar Nominated Short Films Documentary

For the first time ever, I watched the Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts. Usually, they are hard to find and are only in theaters for a short time. The five films are all excellent and deserve to be nominated. Most of them deal with very troubling stories and situations. My two favorites are Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud and Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”.

Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud by Craig Renaud and Juan Arredondo, is a documentary about Brent Renaud, the first photojournalist to die in the Ukraine war in 2022. The film presents his amazing life as he traveled to dangerous locations, including war zones, to bring the stories to us. We see him in Guatemala, Sudan, Iraq and Afghanistan and even in the streets of Chicago. Many of the scenes are quite horrific. It is a very memorable film about a man dedicated to his craft. His younger brother Craig, who often worked with him, co-directed the film. I highly recommend it. The film lasted 37 minutes.

A film that has a lasting impact is Children No More: “Were and Are Gone” by Hilla Medalia and Sheila Nevins. The documentary takes place in Israel during the conflict in Gaza and is about an organization of Israeli activists whose mission is to see that the thousands of Palestinian children who have been killed in the war are not forgotten. The group places photos of the children who have been killed on posters with their names and ages and the words Was and Is No More. Then they gather in large groups in public places and display the pictures. For many of the children there are no surviving photos, so they use paintings of flowers and plants in their place. The group’s demonstrations are completely silent, but they still must endure the insults of fellow Israelis who see them as traitors for not honoring the Israeli dead and hostages resulting from the conflict. The film is very emotional and is 36 minutes long.

2026 Oscar Nominated Short Films Animated

I saw all five Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts and found them all entertaining and very creative. My two favorites were The Three Sisters and Forevergreen.

The Three Sisters by Konstantin Bronzit was easily the funniest of the shorts. It uses a crude form of animation with no dialogue. It features three sisters who live on an isolated island reachable only by boat. They find themselves with no money and decide to rent out one of their rooms. Soon a very large sailor arrives and rents the room from them. Before long each sister takes turns dressing up, trying to appeal to the man and party with him. Jealousy results causing many comical situations involving the sisters and their new male friend. It was a comic take on human nature. The short lasts 14 minutes.

Forevergreen by Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears is a kind of morality play done in very detailed 3D animation. It is set in the woods where a bear cub lives on a mountain with a tall pine tree. The tree wants to care for the tiny cub, feeding him with its own seeds and protecting him. They live there happily until one day when the bear, now grown, gets a taste of some food left behind by humans, gets addicted to the taste and leaves in search of more putting himself in great peril, rejecting the pine tree who wants to protect him. It’s a sweet story about caring for one another to the point of laying down one’s life for another. It is very colorful, has no dialogue and lasts only 13 minutes.

2018 Oscar Nominated Short Films Live Action       4 ½ stars

The Oscar Nominated Shorts, Live Action mainly deal with very serious subjects and have only a single comedy among them.  My favorite was “The Silent Child”, a film written by a deaf advocate who also acts in it, about a young deaf five-year-old girl who is neglected by her family who are too concerned with their own lives to learn sign language and to communicate with their daughter.  The social worker succeeds in drawing her out of her shell in spite of the oblivious family.  Another that I really liked was “Watu Wote”, from Germany, which concerns an actual event near the Kenya/Somalia border where a busload of poor travelers were attacked by Muslim extremists.  At great risk to themselves, the Muslim passengers protected the Christian passengers from being killed by the terrorists.  The film was terrifying and uplifting in how events transpire.  The Oscar Nominated Shorts may still be in theaters so you have a chance to see them.

2018 Oscar Nominated Short Films Animated         4 stars

The Oscar Nominated Shorts in Animation this year while good, seem to have a departure from most years as there is not the level of humor that we usually get.  My personal favorite is the entry from the UK, “Revolting Rhymes”, based on Roald Dahl’s adaptation of classic fairy tales into a story of crime and vengeance.  We find Red Riding Hood teaming up with Snow White to take on the evil queen, the big bad wolves and the greedy financier pigs (of The Three Pigs).  It’s narrated by the Big Bad Wolf himself and really keeps us guessing about where the story is headed.  Also interesting is a French entry called “Garden Party” a dialogue free scene of a bullet riddled mansion that is being taken over by local frogs and toads.  This one may not be suitable for young viewers!

2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary, Animated and Live Action

For the first time I viewed all fifteen nominated short films before the big ceremony and have my own picks for my favorites. In the Documentary category I really like The Elephant Whisperers. This film from India shows a dedicated couple in a wildlife preserve who have dedicated their lives to caring for orphaned Asian elephants that have been separated from their herds. My animated favorite was The Flying Sailor, about a sailor flying through the air as a result of the largest non-nuclear explosion ever created when a cargo ship loaded with TNT has a mishap. The poor sailor has all his clothes blown off and sees his life flash before him as he miraculously survives. Two in the Live Action category are especially worth mentioning. Le Pupille concerns the young girls in a Catholic orphanage in Italy during World War II. It involves a rather risqué song on the radio, a Christmas pageant and a luscious red cake. In The Red Suitcase a young girl arrives in a foreign country from Iran where she has been promised to wed a much older man. It is clear that she does not want this new life and will do anything to escape this fate.

2021 Oscar Nominated Shorts Live Action

I recently viewed the Oscar Nominated Shorts in an actual theater, something I have not done in over a year. There were five shorts in the Live Action category and all were very good. Three of them shared a common theme that was about people choosing to do the right thing in a difficult situation. Feeling Through is about a young black man who is out late at night in a city and encounters a blind and deaf man who needs help getting home. The young man has to choose between his own plans and the needs of this stranger. White Eye is from Israel and concerns a young man who discovers his bicycle on the street that was stolen from him a month previously. It is in the possession of an undocumented alien who is struggling to provide for his own family. The Letter Room stars Oscar Isaac as a prison guard who is assigned the job of reading letters to inmates to look for suspicious correspondence. This includes the prisoners on death row, especially one inmate who is receiving alarming letters from his girlfriend on the outside. The guard is concerned that the prisoner never writes back to her so inserts himself into the situation.  But my personal favorite was The Present. It is about a Palestinian family living in Israel who have to deal with the travel restrictions placed on them by the Israeli government and how they are treated by the Israeli soldiers. It is quite dramatic and includes some intense moments of confrontation. I am hoping for a win for The Present when the Oscars are presented on April 25.