Best Live Action Short Film Category Reviewed
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...