This month, in advance of the Oscars (which will be broadcast Sunday, March 12) I’m highlighting some of the Oscar-nominated shorts that are directed by women. It’s been a while since I’ve watched shorts and I’d forgotten how satisfying they can be. It feels a bit like returning to short stories after reading novels. I’ve arranged them in order from shortest to longest. You could watch one every night this week and still have time for your favorite TV shows.
I don’t have much to say about the Oscar nominations except that I was disappointed that The Woman King didn’t get any nominations. The movie was very popular with audiences, was led by a major star (Viola Davis) and seems to be the kind of big, sweeping, must-see-on-the-big-screen kind of epic that Hollywood likes. Director Gina Prince-Bythewood wrote an op-ed for the Hollywood Reporter about it, noting that she and other Black directors such as Alice Diop (Saint Omer) and Chinonye Chukyu (Till) had been totally shut out of the awards. Both Till and Saint Omer are streaming VOD for $5.99, and The Woman King is now on Netflix. (I recently wrote about Saint Omer for The Common and will probably highlight it in a future newsletter.)
Anyway, I’ll be watching on Sunday night–and I’m going to send my red carpet superlatives to those on my paid subscriber list. If that sounds fun to you, now is the time to subscribe. Otherwise, I’ll see you next month.
The Flying Sailor (2022)
Written & Directed by Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby
*Nominated for Best Animated Short Film*
8 minutes; Streaming on YouTube (New Yorker Screening Room)
If you only watch one short, pick this one. It’s exciting, beautiful, funny, and profound. It takes you out of time and into space. It’s a near-death experience and a life-affirming one. It’s an astounding collage, a work of art. It’s just eight minutes of your life. You have nothing to lose except that time you would have spent doomscrolling. IMDB * INTERVIEW * LINK
My Year of Dicks (2022)
Directed by Sara Gunnarsdóttir
Written by Pamela Ribon
*Nominated for Best Animated Short Film*
24 minutes; Streaming on Hulu and Vimeo
A very funny, very real look at a young woman’s attempts to lose her virginity in the 1990s. But she keeps choosing the wrong guy. Told in five chapters, with each chapter using a different animation style, this short has kind of a fairy tale structure. Our heroine, Sarah, is on a quest. Will she find someone worthy of her desire? IMDB * INTERVIEW * LINK
Haulout (2022)
Directed by Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev
*Nominated for Best Documentary Short Film*
25 minutes; Streaming on Youtube (New Yorker Screening Room)
The less you know about this one going in, the better. A marine biologist goes to Siberia every year to observe and record walrus migration. Their journey has been drastically altered by the melting sea ice. What he sees is incredible, nightmarish, and otherworldly. IMDB * INTERVIEW * LINK
Le pupille (2022)
Directed by Alice Rohrwacher
Written by Alice Rohrwacher and Carmela Covino
*Nominated for Best Live Action Short Film*
37 minutes; Streaming on Disney+ and Hulu
I will be watching this one again at Christmas and probably every Christmas from now on. Set in an Italian orphanage during World War II, it involves a lavish cake and a very strange Christmas Eve ritual. I don’t want to spoil any aspect of the plot but it’s the kind of story that looks very different from an adult perspective than from a child’s. My son thought the ending was tragic, while I thought it was ironic and funny. The version streaming on Disney+ and Hulu is dubbed and we watched it that way because my daughter can’t read subtitles (a common situation that the director apparently anticipated), but I recommend switching it to the original Italian. IMDB * TRAILER * INTERVIEW
The Elephant Whisperers (2022)
Directed by Kartiki Gonsalves
*Nominated for Best Documentary Short Film*
41 minutes; Streaming on Netflix
Did you ever wish you could be friends with an elephant? This sweet, gentle nature documentary centers on a couple, Bomman and Bellie, who bring up an orphaned elephant, Radhu, nursing him back to health. Their story unfolds in a nature reserve in southern India (Mudumulai Reserve in Tamil Nadu), a conservation area that is home to a wide array of endangered species. Although the focus is on elephants, you also see tigers, monkeys, leopards, and a wide variety of birds. I watched it with my children and they both enjoyed it, though I had to read the subtitles out loud to my daughter. Honestly, though, this is the kind of story that doesn’t need much dialogue, everything that is important is without words. IMDB * TRAILER * INTERVIEW