Butterfly (2025)/Forevergreen (2025)/Retirement Plan (2025)

  These are all of the animated shorts I managed to see before the ceremony.  They were all pretty good but I didn't get to see the winner so I don't know how they actually stack up.

Butterfly (Papillon) - A man recounts a lifetime through swimming, from growing up in North Africa, competing for France in the 1936 Olympics, being detained in a concentration camp, marriage, death, liberation, and always, the water.

This was based on the life of Alfred Nakache, a French-Algerian Olympian swimmer.  It's inspiring, sure, but also depressing as fuck.  The animation looks like a series of oil paintings.  It's available on YouTube.

Forevergreen - An abandoned bear cub is taken in by a sentient pine tree.  The cub grows into an adolescent bear and is happy for a while until it sees a crow eating a bag of chips.  It follows the crow to an abandoned campsite over the wishes of the tree and gorges itself on trash, accidentally starting a forest fire. 

This was pretty but it did feel a little like a rejected Pixar idea.  Like it needed to be fleshed out to feature-length, because otherwise the bear comes off as kind of a dick.  Also available on YouTube.

Retirement Plan - A man (Domhnall Gleeson) recounts all the things he's going to do when he retires that he never had time for when he was working.

This was very cute and genuinely funny but also seriously depressing when you think about how much time you waste while you tell yourself you'll do it in the future.  Available on YouTube.

Jane Austen's Period Drama (2025)/The Singers (2025)/Two People Exchanging Saliva (2025)/A Friend of Dorothy (2025)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short    For expediency's sake, I'm lumping all the shorts together.

Jane Austen's Period Drama - Kanopy - a very funny short that people online have likened to a better class of SNL skit.  I think that's setting the bar too low but I don't like SNL.  

Miss Estrognia Talbot (Julia Aks) is in the middle of being proposed to by handsome bachelor Mr. Dickley (Ta'imua) when she unexpectedly gets her period.  Confused and alarmed, Dickley rushes her home where she argues with her sisters over how much she should educate him on women's biology.

Honestly, it's 2026.  If we cannot as a society be over the "ew, girls have cooties" factor about periods, what are we even doing?

The Singers - Netflix-  almost the polar opposite of Jane Austen, this doesn't have a single woman on screen and is four times as emotional.

A bar full of men is energized by a late-night bet:  whoever is the best singer wins a free beer and $100.

Absolutely magical performances.

Two People Exchanging Saliva - YouTube - what if Carol had been directed by Yorgos Lanthimos?

A shopgirl (Luàna Bajrami) and a wealthy housewife (Zar Amir Ebrahimi) try to suppress their desire in a world that criminalizes kissing as disgusting.

Only the French would think that the fastest way to show a dystopia is to make kissing illegal.  The garlic gum is going to give me nightmares, though.

A Friend of Dorothy - Kanopy - And we're back to being wholesome and cute.

A teen (Alistair Nwachukwu) trying to retrieve an errant soccer ball from a garden befriends an elderly lady named Dorothy (Miriam Margolyes) who encourages him to pursue his dreams.  All of them.

So sweet.  

Butcher's Stain (2025)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short    Catching at least one of the shorts this year.

Samir (Omar Sameer) works as a butcher in an Israeli grocery store until he is accused of tearing down posters of hostages in the breakroom.  He is told by the store manager (Roma Toledano) that someone saw him do it, and if he confesses they can move on with disciplinary actions.  Except Samir knows that he didn't do it and he's being unfairly targeted for being Palestinian.

This is less about Israel-Palestine than it is about toxic workplace cultures and the everpresent threat of poverty.  Samir gets by on the fringes but any kind of issue jeopardizes his entire life.  That's pretty universal.  

This is a moderately long short at 26 minutes and it's streaming on Kanopy with a library card.  It reminds me of the short about a stolen bicycle from a few years back (White Eye).

Anuja (2024)/A Lien (2024)/I'm Not a Robot (2023)

Nominated for Best Live Action Short Film    I managed to find three of the Live Action shorts so I just shoved them all into one post.  This one is on Netflix.  

Anuja (Sajda Pathan) is 8-years-old and working with her older sister (Ananya Shanbhag) in a textile factory.  A math whiz, she is offered a chance to take a placement exam at a boarding school but the factory owner (Nagesh Bhonsle) makes a counter-offer:  work in the office for slightly more money or he will fire Anuja and her sister.

It has an open ending but it's still a little fucked up that an 8-year-old child has to weigh her entire future and choose between opportunity but being separated from her only family and crushing poverty but not being alone.

  Content warning:  deportation  

This one is on Vimeo.  Oscar (William Martinez) is in the Immigration office for his final interview before he receives his green card when he is targeted by ICE for deportation.  His frantic wife (Victoria Ratermanis) struggles to find the paperwork that will keep their 7-year-old daughter (Koralyn Rivera) from being taken as well.

Here's your friendly reminder that ICE is an evil organization and should be abolished.

  Content warning:  suicide  

A woman (Ellen Parren) fails a Captcha test at work and spirals into an existential crisis.  

This is also fucked up but at least it's funny, like a Black Mirror episode filmed by Wes Anderson.  It's on YouTube and The New Yorker website.

Watu Wote (2017)

  This Oscar-nominated short is based on a true story in case you were having too good a day today and needed to be reminded that horrible people exist.  Content warning:  terrorism

A woman (Adelyne Wairimu) confronts her prejudices when she is stuck on a bus being threatened by a terrorist group.

It's not a fun watch but it is only 21 minutes long so at least it's fast.  It's streaming on Kanopy.

DeKalb Elementary (2017)

  This is an Oscar-nominated short from 2017.  Content warning:  active shooter

A distressed man (Bo Mitchell) walks into an Atlanta elementary school with a rifle and takes the front office hostage.  The receptionist (Tarra Riggs) calls 911 and attempts to keep him calm.

This is based on a real 911 call that was resolved peacefully.  That probably counts as a spoiler for the film but frankly, I think we've all seen enough dead kids in real life that this basically qualifies as a fairy-tale ending.  This guy didn't even want to hurt children; he wanted to be killed by cops because he was off his medication.  We're so fucked up as a country, that's practically gentlemanly behavior.

261 mass shootings this year the in U.S. as of July 4, 2024.  I could link every word of this post to a different article and still have 88 left over.  I don't give a shit what your politics are.  Regulate guns and fund mental health services.

DeKalb Elementary is currently streaming on Kanopy.

La Femme et le TGV (2017)

  See, eventually I watch the shorts.  It just takes me a while.  Roughly seven years in this case.

Elise (Jane Birkin) is trying to hold on to her way of life, biking to town, running her small bakery in the face of a conglomerate with lower prices, and waving at the high-speed rail that passes her house twice a day.  She doesn't expect anything, but one day finds a letter in her garden, thrown from the train.  She begins a correspondence with Bruno (Gilles Tschudi), forging a connection that gives her a new lease on life.  But when the train schedule changes, will she ever be able to see him?

Jane Birkin passed away pretty recently and this is the only film I've seen of hers.  It's only 30 minutes long and she manages to pack two hours of character development into them.  It doesn't bring any real surprises, you pretty much know how it's going to go as soon as you see each character introduced, but it's a sweet little film about how life doesn't stop and you can find joy at any age.

It's currently streaming on Kanopy.

Sing (2016 short)

  This is not the animated animal singing competition movie.  This is an Oscar-nominated short from Hungary about a school choir.

Zsófi (Dóra Gáspárvalvi) is a new student very excited about joining the school's prestigious choir, until the teacher (Zsófia Szomsi) pulls her aside and tells her that her singing isn't good enough and she should just mouth the words.  Zsófi's best friend, Liza (Dorottya Hais), notices the change and confronts the teacher, finding out that fully half the choir has been instructed not to sing.  On the day of the national competition, the children make their voices heard.

I'm conflicted here.  On the one hand, fuck that teacher for being a condescending, gatekeeping bitch and yay to those kids for understanding collective action, but on the other hand, choir is a competition.  A lot of them have actual auditions before you can get a slot, even in school.  Is it more or less cruel to tell a kid they're not good enough and can't join, or let them in so they can pretend?  I don't know.  I guess it depends on the kid.  

But seriously, fuck that teacher.  Also, as a kid who was in school choir, we were told that judges could hear if people weren't singing, but also that if we forgot the words we should sing the word watermelon instead.

It's streaming on Kanopy and it's less than half an hour long.

Genius Loci (2014)

  I thought this was the Oscar nominated short from last year, but it is not.  That is apparently an animated film with the same name.  This is a short documentary about the restoration of the Olivetti showroom in Piazza San Marco, Venice, Italy.  Which happened in the 1950s.  But was recently re-opened after some flooding shut down the square.  So watch it if you're interested in architecture?  

It does seem like a really nice space but it did not align with any of my particular interests.  Experts spend a lot of time talking about the designer, Carlo Scarpa, but it comes off as pretentious art school posturing.  It just feels like a lot to talk about a store that sells typewriters.  Anyway, it's streaming on Kanopy.

Yes-People (2020)

  This animated short comes from Iceland and follows a building full of people as they go about their day with all their little interpersonal connections and misfires.  The only word spoken in the film is Yes, hence the title.  It's cute but I struggled to like it.  There just wasn't enough going on for me.  It's currently streaming on Kanopy and is a brisk eight minutes long.

White Eye (2020)

  This was one of last year's crop of Oscar shorts.  

Omer (Daniel Gad) finally finds his stolen bike locked outside of a butcher shop.  The cops are useless, and he can't find anyone willing to cut the bike's lock.  Omer waits around, getting progressively angrier, until the bike's new owner comes out.  Yunes (Dawit Tekelaeb) bought the bike from a guy at the bus station and it's his only means of getting his daughter to kindergarten.  Omer must decide how far he is willing to go to get his bike back when it could mean that Yunes is deported.

If you want to watch a depressing ass story about poverty and bicycles, The Bicycle Thief is streaming on HBO Max.  White Eye is the Reader's Digest version, clocking in at just under half an hour, conveniently also on HBO Max.