2020 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Live Action
A Sister: B+
Brotherhood: B
The Neighbors' Window: B+
Saria: B+
Nefta Football Club: B
Much like the animated shorts, this year's crop of Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts are largely devoid of much in the way of lightheartedness. As presented in theaters this week, the program begins with A Sister, a 16-minute Belgian film detailing a phone call to Emergency Services. There are only three characters: the man driving a car; the woman in the passenger seat placing a call she claims to be to her sister about care for her child; and the emergency services worker, a woman, who actually receives said call. It's maybe not that plausible that a man who sexually assaulted a woman and is now driving her to some undetermined place would just allow her to make a phone call to anyone, or trust that she is actually calling her sister. But, the tension in the phone call between two women who have to speak largely in code is effectively gripping.
Funny how the Animated Shorts featured Daughter and then Sister as titles, and in the same year the Live Action Shorts feature A Sister and then Brotherhood. Clearly they're grouping them together this way on purpose. Anyway, Brotherhood is a 25-minute Tunisian-Canadian film about a Tunisian family whose eldest son returns from fighting in Syria with a very young, pregnant bride in tow. Apropos of nothing, what struck me the most about this show was how all three boys are covered in massive amounts of freckles. As it happens, director Meryam Joobeur found the two redheaded brothers by chance and later convinced them to be first-time actors in her film. That does deepen how impressive the final product is, although if you know little of the details of local sociopolitical issues in the Tunisian region, some measure of the story will not retain the intended impact.
Saria is also an American film, 23 minutes, but set in a Guatemalan orphanage and based on the true story of 41 teen girls who died in a fire in 2017. It is a fictionalized dramatization, but one that sheds a global light on a horrible event that plenty of people in the rest of the world don't know about. I certainly didn't, and thus this film succeeds at its stated intent that these girls' lives not be forgotten. Apparently these girls' caretakers did not bother to even open the door they were locked in with a fire for nine minutes, and to date there has been no prosecutions of any kind. That is obviously disgusting, and hopefully the exposure of this film puts some much needed pressure on local authorities.
Nefta Football Club, a 17-minute film from France but also set in Tunisia, comes the closest to being a light-hearted story: two young brothers find a lost drug mule wandering the desert hills with headphones on its ears. Cutting back and forth with the older couple of men who cannot find the mule, the two brothers find packets of cocaine in the baskets draped on either side of the mule. This puts them in a potentially very dangerous situation, of course, but the amusing ending deals with the ultimate fate of the cocaine, as the older brother tries in vain to find locals to sell it to, and the younger brother finds an innovative use for it in his local soccer field, or more accurately in this country and on this terrain, football pitch.
Brotherhood: B
The Neighbors' Window: B+
Saria: B+
Nefta Football Club: B
Much like the animated shorts, this year's crop of Oscar-nominated Live Action Shorts are largely devoid of much in the way of lightheartedness. As presented in theaters this week, the program begins with A Sister, a 16-minute Belgian film detailing a phone call to Emergency Services. There are only three characters: the man driving a car; the woman in the passenger seat placing a call she claims to be to her sister about care for her child; and the emergency services worker, a woman, who actually receives said call. It's maybe not that plausible that a man who sexually assaulted a woman and is now driving her to some undetermined place would just allow her to make a phone call to anyone, or trust that she is actually calling her sister. But, the tension in the phone call between two women who have to speak largely in code is effectively gripping.
Funny how the Animated Shorts featured Daughter and then Sister as titles, and in the same year the Live Action Shorts feature A Sister and then Brotherhood. Clearly they're grouping them together this way on purpose. Anyway, Brotherhood is a 25-minute Tunisian-Canadian film about a Tunisian family whose eldest son returns from fighting in Syria with a very young, pregnant bride in tow. Apropos of nothing, what struck me the most about this show was how all three boys are covered in massive amounts of freckles. As it happens, director Meryam Joobeur found the two redheaded brothers by chance and later convinced them to be first-time actors in her film. That does deepen how impressive the final product is, although if you know little of the details of local sociopolitical issues in the Tunisian region, some measure of the story will not retain the intended impact.
The Neighbors' Window, a 20-minute Ameican short set in New York City, was in the end my personal favorite of these five, and would get my vote for the win. I have a feeling Brotherhood has a better chance, and I'll freely admit that The Neighbors' Window just speaks to me as a more typical American voyeur. It's a bit of a modern, more bittersweet riff on Hitchcock's Rear Window, dealing with the consequences of spying on neighbors in an apartment in the building directly across the street. In this case, it's an early-middle-aged couple (Maria Dizzia and Greg Keller) with three young children, who become somewhat obsessed with the free-spirited twentysomething couple across the way. It's less sexual than it is wistful, this couple seeing a sort of youthful freedom they have lost. A plot twist comes regarding that young couple, as you might expect, and it jolts the older couple out of their self-pity. It sounds a little hokey, but in writer-director Marshall Curry's hands, it has a surprising finesse.
Saria is also an American film, 23 minutes, but set in a Guatemalan orphanage and based on the true story of 41 teen girls who died in a fire in 2017. It is a fictionalized dramatization, but one that sheds a global light on a horrible event that plenty of people in the rest of the world don't know about. I certainly didn't, and thus this film succeeds at its stated intent that these girls' lives not be forgotten. Apparently these girls' caretakers did not bother to even open the door they were locked in with a fire for nine minutes, and to date there has been no prosecutions of any kind. That is obviously disgusting, and hopefully the exposure of this film puts some much needed pressure on local authorities.
Nefta Football Club, a 17-minute film from France but also set in Tunisia, comes the closest to being a light-hearted story: two young brothers find a lost drug mule wandering the desert hills with headphones on its ears. Cutting back and forth with the older couple of men who cannot find the mule, the two brothers find packets of cocaine in the baskets draped on either side of the mule. This puts them in a potentially very dangerous situation, of course, but the amusing ending deals with the ultimate fate of the cocaine, as the older brother tries in vain to find locals to sell it to, and the younger brother finds an innovative use for it in his local soccer field, or more accurately in this country and on this terrain, football pitch.
Overall: B+