Best Live Action Short Film Category Reviewed
Friday, February 7, 2020 at 5:00PM by Eric Blume
The Live Action Short category offers a much more diverse slate for this category than last year, when almost every short film centered around young boys in danger. There’s some fine filmmaking here, all witness to the talent of their directors who should all have bright futures ahead of them.
Brotherhood comes to us from production companies across four countries (Canada, Tunisia, Qatar, and Sweden…quite a combo!) and deals with a Tunisian family. The son returns from fighting in Syria with a young new wife, much to the consternation of his father. Director Meryam Joobeur delivers a nice twist on the “sins of the father” genre here, and she has an excellent sense of how to use the camera. The actors are often taking up 80% of the frame, and she creates an ambiguous sense of location and wonderful sense of dislocation with this smart framing...
The script relies a little too heavy-handedly on a last-minute reveal to wrap things up, but she’s cast a bunch of terrific camera faces and thrusts you into a culture and situation with force and intelligence. Producer Maria Garcia Turgeon is on her second consecutive nomination in this category as she produced Fauvre just last year)
Nefta Football Club delivers sweet ironic comedy. To give any plot details would ruin the film’s delightful surprises, but it’s set in a Tunisian village and is directed by French filmmaker Yves Piat with a gloriously droll wit. It’s hard for a short film to jam in brotherhood, drug dealers, donkeys with headphones, border conflicts, and soccer talk all in 17 minutes, but this writer-director is incredibly skillful, and the movie is smart, light, substantive, and funny.
The Neighbor’s Window is the single American entry, an easygoing drama directed by Marshall Curry, who has previously been thrice Oscar-nominated as a documentary filmmaker. The message of this movie is super beautiful, and you can feel Curry’s attachment to it, but dramatically it feels a bit clunky. The actors often feel like they’re “acting” and the story beats are a little on-the-nose. Still, you can see Curry’s talent here, and you’re left with a lovely feeling as the credits roll.
Saria, which tells a tragic true-life story of girls at a Guatemalan orphanage. The movie, directed by Bryan Buckley and Matt Lefebvre, has an effortless authenticity. Their work with non-professional actors shines with authority and spark, and they’re fully in control of this narrative. They present a direct, unadorned authoring of an unbearably horrifying story, and their lean approach is affecting and moving.
Une Soeur (A Sister) is a Belgian production from writer-director Dephine Girard, featuring a phone call between a woman in peril and the woman who responds to her call at emergency services. Oscar Short voters seem to like phone call movies (there was one last year, and one that won a few years back), but this example earns its stripes. The short exists mainly to display how effectively Girard is able to build suspense, and she knocks it out of the park. She smartly doesn’t lean into the sisterhood metaphors but instead has the grace to tell the story powerfully and direct the actors with immediacy and simplicity.
Should win: Nefta Football Club. It’s fresh and inventive, with a wicked comic voice.
Could Win: The Neighbor’s Window because it’s very life-affirming.
Will Win: Brotherhood. This would be a very just winner, a beautifully-made film.
Marshal Curry, Oscars (19), Reviews, short films
Reader Comments (7)
Great capsules! I enjoyed all of them too, as well as a bunch of the other shortlisted ones.
Predicting this category is a fool's errand these days, with voting open to everyone. It was so much easier under the old system whereby only special screening attendees could vote. The Neighbor's Window would have been an easy call.
Left with a lovely feeling?!?! I wanted to gag. How nice for that woman that another woman's (a black woman's, at that) tragedy can exist only as an affirmation of how "good she's got it." Besides being a Hallmark-movie "Rear Window" rip-off, it's just tacky and gross.
Nefta Football Club for the win!
I loved ‘A Sister’ - a masterclass in building suspense and a really smart example of how to zero in on a #metoo situation without a hint salaciousness or voyeurism. Telling it from the POV of the witness rather than the victim or the aggressor means that the specific details of the unfolding emergency play as universally experienced horror whilst also demonstrating the essential need for sensitive, empowered and funded helpers. The Academy would do really well to honour this in a year dominated by male narratives.
‘Nefta Football Club’ is the most fun though, so I’d be fine with that winning. I concur with Jonathan on ‘The Neighbor’s Window’ - it left a bad taste in my mouth and I also found it clunky, obvious and the actors were unengaging. I can’t believe some Oscar pundits are predicting it for the win - I’d be very disappointed.
I keep reading everywhere how Brotherhood is the frontrunner and that confuses me. While I would say that it’s one of the best directed and shot shorts, I don’t know a single person who has said they loved it. It got zero applause at my screening.
My top choices would be:
1) A Sister - thrilling from start to finish
2) Nefta Football Club - hilarious
I think Nefta could win it.
I also thought "A Sister" was the best made film of these -- taut, spine jangling, and just right.
I am rooting for Saria, but Nefta and Neighbor would be ok winners with me!