The 2016 Oscar Nominated Live Action Short Films take on a range of conflicts both political and personal. From observations on life in war zones to deeply personal journeys of triumph and destruction, the five nominated filmmakers have plenty to say and find beautiful ways of saying it.
Everything Will Be Okay
The first half of Patrick Vollrath's's brilliant short is a ticking time bomb of realizing something is out of place as an anxious, divorced father picks up his daughter for a weekend visit. The second half is a slow burning, understated meltdown. Unfolding in an increasingly tense 24 hours and shot with breathless, natural restraint, Vollrath's perfectly pitched film relies on the deeply felt simplicity of his writing and the authenticity of his actors' performances to tell a potent, heart-wrenching story. Simon Schwartz and Julia Pointner feel vitally real as father and daughter and play out their complex dilemma with mesmerizing emotional intelligence. About as perfect as a 20 minute short can be, directed with great confidence and control by a writer/director to expect great things from.
Shok
Albanian ethnic cleansing finds a voice in this touching, beautifully made tale of boyhood, friendship and lost innocence during the Kosovo war. Purportedly based on true events, there is heartbreak at the core of Jamie Donoughue's melancholy meditation on both the humanity and mindless cruelty that seem to define our co-existence on the planet.
Finding an abandoned bike in the road, Petrit thinks back on the tragic events that defined his childhood in Serbian-occupied Kosovo. His best friend Oki had just bought his first bike, while Petrit is making money selling food stamps to Serbian soldiers. Their families are just trying to retain their Albanian heritage under harsh conditions. Oki doesn't trust the soldiers, but when Petrit convinces him that he needs his bike to run a profitable "business", they both get drawn into something bigger than they are ready to understand.
With strong performances from both young actors, excellent production detail and beautiful cinematography, Donoughue tells a vivid story of ordinary life and small triumphs wiped out by the undiscriminating brutality of war.
Stutterer
A London typographer with a severe stutter panics when his online crush wants to meet offline. Greenwood has built a quiet, alienated life, surrounding himself with words but unable to express himself in the real world. His only significant relationship is with a girl he met online and easily charms with his sharp mid and quick wit, but what would he do if they ever had to meet face to face?
Managing to avoid the pitfalls of the potentially cloying premise, Benjamin Cleary brings Greenwood's eloquent but stagnant inner world to life with a cacophony of words and language; typography lettering, sign language, overlapping voice overs and halted real-life conversation collide to let us into Greenwood's chaotic internal monologue. Like Greenwood, the film is carefully styled, shot and edited but actor Matthew Needham's winning combination of hip exterior, melancholy voice overs and haunted, lonely stares allow the film to ring human and true.
Ave Maria
Ave Maria takes a darkly comic look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as an orthodox Jewish family crashes their car into a statue of the Virgin Mary outside a small, isolated Palestinian-territory convent, where a handful of Catholic nuns are trying to live out their vow of silence in peace. As the Jewish man knocks on the convent door, Shabbat approaches.
Strict religious customs quickly collide in an absurd comedy of manners as a mute nun must ring up Jewish taxi companies for a Jewish man who can't operate a phone on Shabbat and both holy oil and traditional Jewish stockings must be offered up to repair the only car on the premises. It's clear that no one will be rid of each other without bending a few sacred laws. It's somewhat contrived, but amusing nonetheless.
It's not all played for laughs, though. Basil Khalil's brisk film does offer food for thought in its incredulous view of the absurd gulf between very different people trying to avoid each other in their sincere attempts to honour God in their own ways. Surely they have more in common than they're willing to admit.
Day One
A US military interpreter's first day in Afghanistan starts off badly when she offends her commanding officer by using the men's showers. It doesn't get any better as they head out to track down an enemy bomb maker, watch a soldier blown to bits in a mine field along the way, interrogate a young girl and, most significantly, locate the bomb maker just as his wife is going into labor. This is where the grim, tense story takes off, as the interpreter is forced to deliver the baby as the male doctor is not allowed in the pregnant woman's quarters. At 25 minutes, the short takes quite a while to get started, but the slick production and polished actors help things move along fairly quickly.
The sincere intentions of the writing is clear; barriers of nationality, race and gender are momentarily put on hold as enemies unite around the promise of new life. but bomb makers remain bomb makers even though their babies come into the world innocent. Despite production values of the highest order, though, the film never quite escapes a sense of dramatic contrivance. Both the characters and scenario feel more like an exercise in carefully controlled melodrama and wartime ethics than a glimpse into a rare human moment. Nevertheless, Day One is a polished, dense and gripping war drama with two determined women at its center, and that should be plenty to celebrate.
