The short film categories are some of the freshest, most original films in the Oscar race because we haven’t heard about them for months on end as people debate and argue what is the best of the year. For a lot of prognosticators, the titles aren’t even made known until the Academy releases their annual shortlists before the new year. Over the next few days, The Contending will be looking at Animated Short, Live Action Short, and Documentary Short and highlighting how each of these films can land with voters.
Sometimes I find it amusing when people settle into the Animated Short Film nominees, and they discover that, you know, animation doesn’t have to just be adorable bunnies and talking squirrels. This category always stretches the imagination in terms of scope and style, and this year’s selected 15 come from all over the world. This year’s selected shorlist features films from Iran, several from France, Japan and The Netherlands. Almost ninety films (eighty-eight to be exact; down slightly from last year’s ninety-three) qualified for this year’s race, and, with no Disney in contention, it’s a wide open category.
Which of the contenders below sound like they will make the cut?
Let’s take a look at the contenders…
Au Revoir Mon Monde
We start our list with one of the shortest entries in this wordless, apocalyptic comedy from directors Estelle Bonnardel, Baptiste Duchamps, and Quentin Devred. A man, wearing a fish costume, is enjoying a smoke break when an explosion alerts of the beginning of the end of the world. He spies a large building blocks down the way and he begins to run towards it. As buildings crumble, we don’t know exactly why he is hurtling towards this skyscraper, but we do know that he can’t get the fish costume off.
The image of a blue, exaggerated fish of the sea riding a motorized scooter or being swung around a construction crane is a hilarious one as this sushimi master races against the clock. The shiny glass realism of the buildings falling around him is a great juxtaposition to the bright siliness of his outfit.
It’s short, amusing, and surprisingly weighted.
Au Revoir Mon Monde is streaming on YouTube.
A Bear Named Wojtek
How the story of how a Syrian brown bear became a member of the Polish army during World War II has escaped me until now…I will never understand.
When a baby bear stops a large truck carrying troops in the middle of the road, they immediately bond with it. There is no mama bear in sight, and most people might be nervous about scooping up a bear and taking it from its desolate surroundings. It doesn’t want to sleep outside their tents, and it crawls into bed with them. Iain Gardner’s film explores the balance between friendship and family as he show how Wojtek became a hero to soldiers at the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy. Seriously, how did I not know this story?
The animation swaths the frame in dominant colors–sometimes browns or midnight blues–as other poke through in sparks that nab your attention. There are shorts that are based on true stories, and then there are tales that are meant for animation. Gardner’s film feels too good to be true, but a simple Google search will knock your socks off.
Beautiful Men
Are men more concerned with their appearance than we think they are? Can they expel their true feelings to one another in the cover of darkness or in the company of other men? In Nicolas Keppens’ Beautiful Men, a trio of brothers must confront their fears and one another as they wait for their Turkish hair transplant appointment.
There is something rather drab and plan about the hotel where Koen, Steven and Bart are staying. Bald men shuffle through the hallways and the atmosphere feels lonely and quiet. Each brother is going through their own personal troubles, but they can’t share them with one another. Bart stays in his room and unsuccessfully sexts with his wife, Lindsay, and Koen and Steven seem like they have their own conversations without their third brother.
Is losing your hair a man’s ultimate shame or humiliation? Why do some men feel less like a man if their follicles betray them? Keppens’ film carries an edge of humor while contemplating these masculine concerns.
Bottle George
The yarny, stringy creature trapped in a bottle at the center of Daisuke ‘Dice’ Tsutsumi’s film reminded me of an even more stressed out Beaker from The Muppets. How that’s possible, I don’t know, but this stop-motion film sneaks in the devastation of addiction through the eyes of a child without being heavy-handed.
Our buggy-eyed buddy stays within the glass walls of the bottle as a corpulent cat tries to swat at him or attack him, but the bond between him and a little girl is the most important one. The buildings of this tiny town are packed close so tightly to one another that it feels like they are almost one unit, and, perhaps, the eyes of the community can see that this young girl’s father is battling a fierce case of alcoholism. His hair is unwashed and frayed while hers is shorter and cut closer to her head.
There is something in the eyes that connects father to daughter and even with all the silliness of the kitty and the creature trapped in the bottle, the eyes of a child can consume and understand way more than a parent realizes. She cares for this little bottle creature by protecting it from her other pet and comically shoving food into the neck of the creature’s home, and it’s heartbreaking to imagine that this little girl knows how to parent someone more than her father can.
A Crab In the Pool
Jean-Sébastien Hamel and Alexandra Myotte’s film starts as one thing, and, by the end, transforms into a jagged and touching film about collective grief. It is one of my favorite surprises of this list.
A hot, scorching summer day is felt even more by the lack of things to do. Zoe makes out with her stoner boyfriend while her little brother, Theo, occupies himself in a fantasy world, avoiding the gaze of adults around him. One of these siblings is in the hellscape of adolescence while the other doesn’t even know what’s about to hit him.
The transitions in this film are cheeky, fun, and gnarly. Budding breasts become a crab monster while ketchup could be mistaken for blood in one of the early movements. Once you know what the emotional stakes are, the more you realize how fraught they were from the very beginning. We avoid what’s right in front of our eyes, because we don’t want to face what we fear is coming down the pike.
The animationr reminded me of something that I thought was too-adult for me when I was a kid (complimentary), so it occupies a place in my brain that I didn’t know existed.
In the Shadow of the Cypress
A crash of glass is one of the first sounds you hear in Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani’s gorgeous film about a father and daughter and the painful space between them.
Living by the sea is troublesome for a captain mourning the loss of his wife as his ship remains on the water in the distance. His daughter tries to help him through his post-traumatic stress, but her pain is compounded by the loss of the father that she once knew. When a large whale becomes stranded on the shore near their home, she is determined to help it return to sea. She splashes water on it to keep it cool and struggle to make pesky seagulls fly away from attacking it. There is a tremendous feeling of helplessness from her as her father runs away in any way that he can.
I loved how slender the animation of this father are daughter are compared to the square blockiness of the whale. The animation spikes in style with barbed memories of the night they lost the matriarch of the family–the present in sandy shades of beige and red while the recollections are in a cold, icy blue.
Magic Candies
If you found a bag of strange candies that magically let objects talk or memories to come floating back, you’d try them too. Don’t lie. Daisuke Nishio’s delightful film explores how loneliness can lead to curiosity and maybe some personal growth along the way.
Dong-Dong doesn’t have any friends to play marbles with at the park. Rather than buy another bag of marbles to play with, he decides on a strange bag of candies. Every time he eats one, something strange happens like the couch in his living room begins to chat and begs for Dong-Dong to remove the remote control lodged between its cushions. Once the sweet melts away, the couch can no longer speak. He tries another candy and another, each allowing for a different experience and strange conversation. Maybe he can learn why his dad is so bossy and harsh on him or even tell his dead grandmother one last thing before the candy fully dissolves.
Magic Candies is clever, funny, and heartfelt. Its wild imagination will transport and delight even the harshest of critics, because, after all, we have all wished that we had one more chance to say something meaningful.
Maybe Elephants
Torill Kove and Alex Ivanovici’s film feels like a somber, lovely melody as it looks back at teenage rebellion and a restless mother.
Incomplete images of childhood swirl in the opening before we meet a family set in a routine. A father cooks dinner and is confused on the number of potatoes to cook. A trio of daughters are growing into their own lives and perspectives. It’s exquisite in its ordinariness. The mother, however, feels a dark cloud come over her from time to time, and she needs to make a right turn in their lives.
When the family relocates to Nairobi, they are surprised by how easily they adjust. The colors go from mustard yellows to vibrant purples and greens. They go on safaris. The girls all attend new, separate schools, and they discover the thrill of cute boys on motorcycles. Maybe a change does a family good?
I’m a sucker for animated shorts that feel like opening a memory bank, and Kove’s film is a tribute to that hunt for familial satisfaction.
Me
There is nothing quite like a Don Hertzfeldt film.
I don’t even know if I completely understand his new film as it explores narcissism, police brutality, obsession, family, and legacy all the while featuing an ambitious nugget of a lead character. Even if I don’t understand what the images are telegraphing to me doesn’t mean I wasn’t compelled, entertained, and captivated by the deadpan humor and commentary.
A small man becomes fascinated by the technology he creates, but it consumes his life. He wins awards, but his wife and children feel neglected. Outside his home, the cruelty of the world results in police shooting citizens and empathy flying out the window. Maybe it wasn’t there to begin with? Throughout the entire film is an obsessive drum beat that becomes the soundtrack of this man and humanity as a whole.
Who knows if any of that is correct? A new Hertzfeldt film is cause of celebration.
Me is available on demand via Hertzfeldt’s Vimeo.
Origami
Clocking in at under three minutes, some might assume that there isn’t “enough” to warrant a nomination for Kei Kanamori’s CGI animated work. But you’e so wrong.
A piece of paper begins to fold in on itself before it even hits the ground, but, once it does, it explodes into a cyclone of color and shapes. This short never stops moving: it swirls around you, drops down heights and soars above your head. Butterflies flutter over opening flowers and frogs hop among twirling lillies. I love how the shape of the paper is never hidden as if to unlock something in our imagination of how the ordinary can become the extraordinary.
Short in length? Yes. Stunning? Absolutely.
Percebes
A goose barnacle might seem like an unlikely center of an animated short, but Alexandra Ramires and Laura Gonçalves’ film.
You can almost smell the ocean air as the watercolor blues wash over us. “The seas is uncertain,” one character says after we learn that a percebe is a shellfish found on the Portuguese coast. It is al, we are told, that it is used for the very to mean “understand.” We meet different citizens that have various relationships to the sea and the water, but there is always an unspoken level of respect for everyone’s way of life and perspective.
There is an observational, romantic quality that I didn’t quite expect. The reds mingle alluringly with all the blues, blacks, and whites.
The 21
In 2015, ISIS released a video where 20 Coptic men and one Ghanian were beheaded in Libya, and that is the basis of Tod Polson’s striking, disturbing film.
The amount of iconography stylized throughout this film is impressive, and it has been reported that over 70 artists had a hand in creating the visuals. I was particularly drawn to a lot of the group shots where we see these men from far away as they are being led around by the terrorist organization or when the camera is positioned overhead from a high vantage point.
This is not just a story about faith but violence. In one instance we hear how ISIS reported seeing figures with swords or on horseback–even some angels–as they transported their victims to their final moments. Polson mingles together beauty with unspeakable violence in a compelling way.
Wander to Wonder
Nina Gantz’s stop-motion film reminds us why we love the form of animation. It takes our world and finds nooks and crannies that we should be able to see if we just look closer.
In the 1980s, Wander to Wonder was the premiere childrens’ show to help tykes understand the concepts of kindness and using their smarts. Now that show is a distant memory (maybe it will appear on a streaming service or get rebooted for Apple?), and the creator and star has passed away. What happens to the wee stars Mary, Billybud and Fumbleton?
With the originator gone, this trio is left to fend for themselves as food becomes scarce and more and more flies invade the studio. Survival mode affects even the smaller former stars of this show as they descend into a form of madness. It’s Toy Story meets Yellowjackets with a dash of The Blair Witch Project. I loved the textures of the costumes and how Gantz takes us down to their perspective to succumb to the hysteria.
The Wild-Tempered Clavier
My favorite thing about Anna Samo’s film is how it reinforces that art can be found anywhere. We can use unexpected tools to tell a story–yes, even paint and toilet paper.
The plinking a piano sounds like a distant recollection as a blue frame holds onto the image of someone plucking the keys before a pair of hands sets up our canvas of toilet paper. The classic sound of a projector is heard as images flood through the blue rectangular screen. We see someone trying to get out of bed and then the next reel of a tank is seen.
The kinds of subjects and images change throughout, and I found it immensely amusing to see someone edit and cut the frames of this newfound medium.
Yuck!
Family vacations are a hunting ground for children to run wild, and when you are at an age when adult affection rouses a reaction, you have a recipe for a memorable and hilarious combination. Everyone can relate to Loïc Espuche’s delightful film.
Some of us may not remember when we thought that kissing was gross, but it’s right around the time when we realize that we want to experience our first kiss. Everyone experiences this at a different age, and the young gang at the center of Espuche’s film is wreaking havoc on a waterpark. They hide in the bushes and giggle. They scorn an older couple for a simple peck on the lips.
When you realize that you have that same feeling, though, Espuche employs a visual cue where your lips will glow a glittery pink. It grows on your face and you have to hide it before anyone else sees it. A dreamy, synthesized score begins to creep in, and, before you know it, you are tipsy on the idea of kissing the object of your affection.
Yuck! is absolutely delightful. It’s colorful, relatable, and whimsical.
Who Makes the Cut?
I sometimes think that Animated Short can be the trickiest of the three shorts categories, because you don’t know if they are solely going to respond to the style of animation or the story or even who is behind the camera. Usually Disney and Pixar are a good jumping off point, but where do we start when they aren’t mentioned on the shortlist?
Wander to Wonder stands out to me as a frontrunner for a nomination. It has won a slew of prizes on the short film festival circuit, and it has a unique perspective that audiences are amused by. This would be Don Hertzfeldt’s third nomination if Me makes it in–does that give him an advantage to get in? If we are talking about previous honors, then we could see voters going for Torill Kove’s film since she won for 2006’s The Danish Poet. I counted out Our Uniform last year and they might vote for experimenting with different textures for The Wild-Tempered Clavier, but they might also go for the colorful cuteness of Yuck! The quick comedy of Au Revoir reminds me a lot of 2014’s A Single Life.
Of all the shortlisted films this year, the crowd at my house gave highest praise to A Bear Named Wojtek. You know, a very scientific study. Beautiful Men and A Crab in the Pool also got big scores.
Predictions:
Au Revoir Mon Monde
In the Shadow of the Cypress
Magic Candies
Wander to Wonder
Yuck!
Beautiful Men
A Crab in the Pool
Me
The Wild-Tempered Clavier
