Short but sweet

Academy award candidates for Best Short Film

By Jerrison Oracion, Senior Columnist

The Academy Awards do not only honour the best in feature films. They also honour the best in documentaries and short films. Short films tend to be much shorter in length than feature films, but they can also be very complex. Many now-famous directors of feature films got started with short films.

This year’s nominations for Best Animated Short Film are Sanjay’s Super Team, World of Tomorrow, Bear Story, We Can’t Live Without Cosmos, and Prologue.

First shown with Pixar’s The Good Dinosaur, Sanjay’s Super Team involves a boy named Sanjay, who imagines fantasy versions of Hindu deities while praying with his father. It features the gods Vishnu, Durga, and Hanuman, three key figures of Hinduism, with a superhero twist. In World of Tomorrow, a girl named Emily meets a future version of herself and goes on a tour of her future. While it has a lot of great jokes, it is a bit dark. Bear Story involves a bear trying to get back to his family after being kidnapped by a circus.

We Can’t Live Without Cosmos shows two friends training for a mission to space. Things start out optimistically, but the film becomes very dark in the second half. Prologue shows a battle during the Spartan-Athenian War, shot in a style that feels very similar to 300.

This year’s nominations for Best Live Action Short Film this year are Ave Maria, Friend, Everything Will Be Okay, Stutterer, and Day One. Ave Maria involves an Israeli family getting help from a group of Palestinian nuns after their car breaks down. Friend features a person named Petrit remembering a friend that he had during the Kosovo War named Oki. It is very dark, but many viewers will likely be able to guess the ending.

Everything Will Be Okay tells the story of Michael, a recently divorced man who kidnaps his daughter Lea out of desperation. Stutterer is an odd romantic comedy that goes inside the mind of Greenwood, a man with a stutter. Day One chronicles a U.S. Army translator’s first day on the job. She finds herself in a high-risk situation where she is forced to rescue a child.

As live action and animated short films are typically shown as limited releases, most people don’t get a chance to see them. This year’s nominated short films are currently being shown in the Vancity Theater, so if you’re interested in short films, there is still a chance to watch them.