It’s plausible that the earthshaking disruptions to the central Oscar race “narrative” that Karla Sofía Gascón’s resurfaced tweets have unleashed may wind up trickling down to the few categories that don’t even feature Emilia Pérez. In other words, if voters who expected to be all-in on the representation that Jacques Audiard’s film afforded them are now surveying the other above-the-fold contenders and failing to find a worthy runner-up cause, where can they turn? Why, the reliably PSA-adjacent live action shorts, of course!
We’re admittedly being a tad facetious here, because anyone who’s followed our annual predictions knows that we firmly believe in the myriad ways the dynamics of the mainline contests factor into every race, but in the short film categories in particular. And if you were to ask for a live action short film nominee that distills the uncanny feeling of being stuck in a simulation that somehow, suddenly, went totally awry—as one imagines the world’s few Emilia Pérez fans likely feel—you couldn’t ask for one more appropriate than Victoria Warmerdam’s “I’m Not a Robot” (which, come to think of it, comes with its own built-in trans reading).
Beginning with a familiar dose of CAPTCHA frustration and ending on a note of existential panic no doubt strongly felt by anyone who, like Gascón, is realizing all too late the damage spending decades on social media has wrought in their very consciousness, “I’m Not a Robot” attempts a tricky tonal balancing act. Normally, its calibration of polished cool and “nailed the audition” filmmaking energy (it practically begs to be made into a feature) would see us calling it the frontrunner, but it also embodies the fear and loathing of our A.I.-dominated future. So even though “I’m Not a Robot” is in a lane of its own against its four injustice-minded competitors, it may also hit a little too close to home for the creative class.
Far cuddlier is Adam J. Graves’s even-keeled “Anuja,” which depicts a pair of orphaned sisters in India who labor in a garment factory and dream of a better life as the precocious younger Anuja (Sajda Pathan) reads personal ads from prospective husbands for older sister Palak (Ananya Shanbhag). Recognizing that Anuja has a shot at something better, Palak tries to persuade her to take up a recruiter’s offer to submit to a boarding school entrance exam. A gentle, vaguely allusive parable in a category that frequently favors the hard sell, “Anuja” could still benefit from Netflix’s reliably aggressive backing (Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Mindy Kaling are among its co-producers), and also any lingering sentiment from the international voters that Payal Kapadia’s All We Imagine As Light was screwed out of the nominations it deserved.
The remaining three contenders all wrestle with familiar foes: injustice, inequality, and inhumanity. Cindy Lee’s “The Last Ranger,” arguably the most traditional candidate, stacks the deck drumming up outrage over the illegal, brutal poaching of African rhinos by not only showing one poor creature divorced from its horn via chainsaw, but also framing the entire violent incident through the weeping eyes of a child bystander (Liyabona Mroqoza).
Nebojša Slijepčević’s “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” saves its tears and keeps a stiff upper lip in depicting the cost of retaining your soul in the face of autocratic madness. Recreating a bloody episode in the Bosnian war in eerily level-headed real time, the film builds tension within a single cabin of a stopped train as genocidal soldiers sweep through, peeling off their intended victims. Slijepčević’s film strikes a haunting balance—as gut-wrenchingly prolonged as the main character’s (Goran Bogdan) tacit struggle feels, what lingers in the aftermath is just how quickly the incident passes, leaving only victims in its wake.
Which is, ultimately, a quality shared by “A Lien,” directed with jittery precision by Sam Cutler-Kreutz and David Cutler-Kreutz. From a formal perspective, the film slots alongside any number of past contenders that focus on specific domestic crisis points (“A Sister,” “Everything Will Be Okay,” “Just Before Losing Everything,” just to name a few). But in practice, its nomination arrives at a moment almost as unnervingly prescient as “Two Distant Strangers” did four years ago: in the immediate aftermath of the worldwide George Floyd protests.
“A Lien” tracks a mixed-status married couple arriving late for a green card interview and their grim realization that they’re among the targets of a surprise ICE raid. With a sense of mounting terror that recalls the work of the Safdie brothers, “A Lien” stays determinedly focused on the effects that the immigration system has on the individuals it exploits. And in a politically charged moment when a growing number of American voters seem to see otherdom instead of community, Oscar voters should have no problem picking up their cue here.
Will Win: “A Lien”
Could Win: “Anuja”
Should Win: “The Man Who Couldn’t Remain Silent”
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