Oscars 2024: Breaking Down the Live Action Short Film Shortlist

The short films categories can elude many fans of the Oscars. Most films do not get a wide, theatrical release (streaming certainly helps), and, for a lot of awards season fans, the titles don’t become familiar until the shortlists are announced. Over the next few days, I will be taking a look at Animated Short Film, Live Action Short Film, and Documentary Short Subject to explore the themes and the individual races. Are there clear frontrunners, or should we prepare for a perplexing race? If you missed our coverage of Documentary Short Subject, you can find that here. 

Live Action Short Film is my favorite of the three categories, especially since the Academy tends to honor stories from all over the world. Death and grief is a prevalent theme through this year’s shortlisted films, but never fear! Each one is different than the last one, and it’s not a sobfest–there is a lot of joy in these stories. 187 films qualified for this year’s award, and there was a change in the voting that should change how this race shakes out, but more on that later! Let’s look at the films!

The After
Misan Harriman’s film has not left me since I saw the it back in August during HollyShorts, and I don’t want its message to ever leave my psyche. Anchored by a beautiful, vulnerable performance from David Oyelowo, it teaches or reminds us that we can all pick up the pieces, no matter how much has been destroyed.

Oyelowo plays a businessman who decides to skip work to attend his daughter’s dance recital. They walk through a bustling downtown, but a random, heinous act of violence takes his family away. It’s a shocking prologue, but Harriman never sensationalizes the violence–he’s much more interested in this man’s healing heart. We shut ourselves off when we are overwhelmed with emotion, and I don’t want to go more into the plot since it’s richer if you discover it for yourself. Harriman, in his directorial debut guides us but never condescends, and he presents us with one of the most honest, brutal portrayals of grief that I have ever seen.

The After is streaming now on Netflix. Once you see the film, please come back and read our first interview with Harriman and producer Nicky Bentham or you can watch our second interview with Harriman and Oyelowo. 

The Anne Frank Gift Shop
It’s alarming that some young people might be unaware of the legacy of Anne Frank, and it’s increasingly distressing how many people denounce that the Holocaust ever happened. I don’t think I’ve seen anything quite like Mickey Rapkin’s comedy, The Anne Frank Gift Shop. I’ve said the title to several friends, and they have chuckled, but then immediately threw their hands over their mouths or looked at me with a sheepish expression. The film poses a simple question: Is Anne Frank having a moment?

With our phones in our hands at all times and a lot of young people still feeling the aftereffects of a pandemic as some battle serious anxiety, how do you get them to care about something that happened almost 80 years ago? Rapkin’s film takes place entirely in a pitch meeting where a firm strategizes with reps from the Anne Frank House on how to reach young people. “Why isn’t Anne Frank on TikTok?” asks Madison, an influencer brought into the meeting. Do they put her face on tote bags? Madison even suggests that social media’s algorithms generally respond better to a profile picture with a smile.

Some people might assume that Rapkin’s film is trying to shock people, but his intent is so much deeper than that. If we cannot laugh at our own discomfort to speak about unimaginable events in our history, then we will fail to confront the next horrific moment the minute it crosses our path. Featuring a top-notch cast including Ari Graynor, Chris Perfetti, Kate Burton, and others, this ensemble tears through this script. Gift Shop is audacious, clever, and just what we might need to open our eyes.

An Avocado Pit
Being attracted to someone can carry a palpable feeling. There’s an electricity to the air between you, and you become aware of every word that you say or how your body language communicates with the other person. In Ary Zara’s ravishing An Avocado Pit, a trans woman finds herself flirting with a cis man who isn’t sure of his own desires. If this film is nominated, Zara will become the first trans director in the history of this category.

Larissa (a captivating Gaya Medeiros) visits her friends who are working the streets. They joke and banter and inform her that a handsome man has been parked down the street watching them. Is he a potential john for the sex workers? Larissa, bold and fearless, steps into his Cláudio’s car despite his protests, but he eventually agrees to take her down the street to drop her off. The ride turns into an hours-long, unexpected first date where Larissa and Cláudio drink and playfully flirt.

Zara destroys our expectations of a trans stories on screen by leaning into the romanticism of the moment. It’s a very present, exciting film, but we are conditioned to sense tragedy or violence in trans stories. This is a celebration of trans confidence and trans love.

An Avocado Pit is available to rent here (a steal at $1!)

Bienvenidos a Los Angeles
A mother’s love knows no bounds. In one of the few true stories on this list, Bienvenidos a Los Angeles is a testament to how mothers band together to be reunited with their children.

Director Lisa Cole introduces us to three women: Imani is a Nigerian single mother who is let go from her job as ICE raids are about to take hold. When she hops into a rideshare, she meets fellow passenger, Elizabeth, who is awaiting her son’s arrival at LAX. Their driver, Sunita, offers comfort and a kind ear as she drives. Elizabeth hasn’t seen her son in five years, but her cousin was supposed to pick him up since he has the proper papers. She is risking picking him up, and you can feel the tension in the car. In a random act of kindness, Imani offers to meet Elizabeth’s son, Chris, at the gate to avoid her getting detained. When Imani is waiting inside the airport, we meet a fourth mother who has a choice to make.

Bienvenidos could’ve slipped into melodrama, but Cole never tears us away from what’s at stake. The tension in the car makes us terrified where the story will go, but the emotions are never sacrificed because of the performances from the entire cast.

Dead Cat
I admit that I didn’t think I was ready for a short film about a dead cat since I recently lost a pet, but the dark humor of Annie-Claude Caron and Danick Audet’s threw a curveball at me with almost every scene. A lot of us have lost a pet and grieving it can be a life-altering experience. For parents Catherine and Louis, maybe they are being too careful with their daughter Sophie’s feelings?

Sophie comes home to find that her beloved cat, Nugget, has gone to that Rainbow Bridge…well, Catherine and Louis’ therapist would suggest not using such colorful and fictitious places to help a child grieve. Sophie is getting to an age when she can handle death or more mature themes, but her parents are struggling with it themselves. Maybe they are worried their daughter is growing up too fast? Maybe they, too, do not want to face the reality that some of our most beloved family members leave us.

Whether you’d like to admit it or not, kids know more than we give them credit for. They pick up on our moods or see the expressions we try to hide so desperately. Dead Cat succeeds for its unflinching humor mingled with its gung-ho attitude towards accepting loss and goodbyes.

Good Boy
Tom Stuart’s Good Boy isn’t so much about loss as it is about moving onto the next step. Starring Ben Whishaw and Marion Bailey, Good Boy is a tribute to the witty and unruly spirit of Stuart’s mother. To have that perspective of your own emotions is admirable–I don’t think I would’ve been able to pull off the beautiful dance anywhere as well as Stuart does.

Whishaw’s Danny cannot catch a break. He drives around in his van with his mother offering encouragement from the seat behind, and his plans of robbing a bank are thwarted by his own lack of experience in, you know, crime. Desperate times call for desperate measures! Slowly, though, Danny begins to see people from his life appear out of nowhere, and he doesn’t know what to do with their presence. When it comes to death, our instinct is to run away or lie, because we don’t know how it will affect us.

Thanks to Stuart’s precise direction, this film slides effortlessly from drama to physical comedy and back again. We would all be so lucky to have someone pay tribute to all of us in the way that Stuart pays tribute to his mother.

Read our interview with Stuart here.

Invincible
If you had the chance to honor a childhood friend’s memory, what would you say? Director Vincent René-Lortie looks back at a friend he knew growing up, but never shies away from our inability to handle a young man’s battle with his own mental health. As Marc-Antoine Bernier, Léokim Beaumier-Lépine carries a lot on his shoulders, and he delivers a remarkably layered performance.

Marc is on furlough with his family from a youth detention center, but you can feel how much he doesn’t want to go back. At his family’s house, he can play with his younger sister, but, most importantly, he can spend time outside. It’s bright and warm, and his body language totally shifts when he is dropped back off at his prison. It’s cold with hues of blue, and he feels like a caged animal. You can almost see Beaumier-Lépine’s skin itching.

Marc’s desperation for freedom is a tragic one, and René-Lortie bookends his film with the same phone conversation from different perspectives. As a viewer, we immediately latch onto him and we hope his story will end in a different way.

You can view Invincible and read our in-depth interview with René-Lortie here.

Invisible Border
How difficult is it to carry out your job’s duties if it conflicts with your morals? How do some people turn off their empathy to someone else in order to do what they are told to do? These are just some of lingering questions that stuck with me after watching Mark Gerstorfer’s Invisible Border. This story twisted and turned in more ways than I expected.

Nancy, a police officer, is expecting a slow night, but she just has to get through one last job. Along with another police unit and her superior officer, Albert, they must evict an Albanian family and get them ready for deportation. It’s the middle of the night, and tensions are high. Pristina, the mother, insists that she never received any paperwork in the mail or a phone call informing her that she had to leave the country, but she is told, “We aren’t here to negotiate.” Pristina’s teenage son shoves one of the officers and her young daughter simply cannot understand why they have to leave, especially since she wasn’t born in the family’s home country of Kosovo.

I don’t know how you can look someone in the face and tell them that they have to abandon everything they know. How do you explain that to a child, let alone an adult? As the ordeal escalates, Nancy feels more pressure to intervene. Gerstorfer marks his film with timestamps to give us an idea of the time elapsed, and it gives a chance to breathe in the dips of this rollercoaster, and the claustrophobia is so well-established that we audibly take a breath once we are able to step outside.

Knight of Fortune
We have spoken a lot about death and grief on this list, but I don’t think you’ve seen anything quite like Lasse Lyskjær Noer’s Knight of Fortune, an absurdist look at one man’s reluctance to start the grieving process. Sometimes we laugh when aren’t expecting to, but that helps with wading though our reactions to something serious or a shift in our lives. Noer’s film is marvelously balanced, and it never lets the emotions off the hook.

Set mostly in a sterile morgue, we are introduced to two widowers, Karl and Torben. Karl arrives at the morgue alone, and he can’t bring himself to open his wife’s casket. He focuses, instead, on the flickering, broken light facing him on the other end of the room. He offers to fix it for the morgue, but an attendant politely declines–anything to delay the inevitable, it seems. Later, Karl sobs in the privacy of a restroom cubicle, but the man in the next stall is in need of some toilet paper. Karl’s sobs are interrupted by Torben’s request, his hand jutting out under the stall wall. The two become chummy over their shared grief with Torben guiding Karl’s tentativeness.

By establishing such a strong environment, Lyskjær Noer catches us by surprise. We have become conditioned to pushing our honest feelings down while Knight embraces them and encourages us to let our crying flags fly. We need more media showing men uninhibited by what’s in their hearts, and Lyskjær Noer pushes us to laugh as the tears fall.

You can watch the film and read our interview with Lyskjær Noer here. 

The One Note Man
How set are you in your ways? There are things that I like to be done in a particular fashion, but the lead character, literally named The One Note Man, takes it to a whole new level. In an impossibly sweet short from George Siougas, one man realizes that his beloved quirks might be costing him a true chance at love and happiness.

The One Note Man gets up at the same time, has breakfast, indulges in one sweet, and heads off to work as a member of an orchestra. Playing of the of silliest-sounding instruments ever, the magnificent bassoon, he plays approximately one, solitary note before packing up his instrument and heading home. But what would happen if that routine gets…off? The more the One Note Man tries to get his routine back on track, the more it crumbles before his very eyes…but maybe it’s so he can realize he’s been missing something his entire life? We can be blinded by our own patterns that we don’t look beyond by what we think is best for us when what we need is just beyond our own periphery.

Siougas keeps everything going at a marvelous pace (truly one of the most well-paced films on this shortlist), and the physical comedy reaches a feverish crescendo. Despite no dialogue, you really feel like you are hearing dialogue between the characters. That’s how you know a film is good. You connect with it on a sensory level and plant yourself in the story without realizing it.

Watch our interview with Siougas here.

Red, White and Blue
I was not ready for the emotion that came from Nazrin Choudhury’s Red, White and Blue, a tightly-directed drama about one mother desperate to cross state lines to receive an abortion. There were numerous films about the hot-button topic that qualified through various film festivals, but Choudhury’s film will hit you like a ton of bricks.

Brittany Snow plays Rachel, a single mother trying to keep it all together for the sake of her two kids, Maddy and Jake. She will work extra shifts at a diner while Maddy and Jake color or kill time in a corner booth. A positive pregnancy test throws a wrench into Rachel’s life that she doesn’t need, and Choudhury hits home how common it is for this to upend any woman’s life. If Rachel is stretched beyond her means already, now she has to worry about finding someone to watch Jake, take time off from work, and hope that a clinic can fit her in to their already crammed schedule.

Choudhury embraces the ordinary in her film to allow every viewer see someone they know in this situation. Snow’s Rachel keeps it all together for as long as she can, but we begin to wonder if she will ever be able to let the dam break. You can see it in her shifting eyes and smile that she puts on whenever she needs to. You see your friends, your sisters, your mothers in this film.

You can view the film and read our interview with Choudhury here. 

The Shepherd
What took me by surprise with Iain Softley’s The Shepherd was how it serves as a thriller but also a reminder of those who serve to protect. The legacy of it all. By positioning us, the viewer, in an impossible situation, we cannot help but sit at the edge of our seat.

On Christmas Eve in 1957, Freddie Hook is disappointed that he will not be able to get home for the holidays to see his family. It turns out that another pilot cannot make his trip home, so Freddie seizes the opportunity to surprise his loved ones just in time. “You’ll be the only one in the sky,” he is told by a higher-ranking official. Flying over the North Sea, Freddie suddenly experiences multiple-equipment failure, leaving Freddie with no communication on how to land the plane. This is literally my worst nightmare. Suddenly, a mysterious plane approaches with none other than John Travolta as a Mosquito pilot who offers his assistance.

One might think that The Shepherd would conclude with a rousing victory of Freddie’s wheels landing on solid ground, but Softley’s film goes a step further. It’s handsomely made, and, surely, will make you thankful for the time you had with your family this last Christmas.

The Shepherd is streaming exclusively on Disney+. You can read our interview with Softley here. 

Strange Way of Life
You want gay cowboys? Pedro Almodóvar will give you gay cowboys! The Academy Award-winning director famously created this answer to Brokeback Mountain, and it has been one of the most high-profile films in the Live Action Short Film race. Starring Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal, it’s a gay ol’ time in the old west.

Pascal’s Silva and Hawke’s Sheriff Jake have been apart for a quarter of a century, but the former lovers are reunited after Jake’s sister-in-law is murdered and he swears to bring the killer to justice. Their passion is rekindled and they spend the night together, but Jake then discovers that the man he is looking for is actually Silva’s son, Jeff. He suspects that Silva only arrived into town to help his son escape. Hawke’s grizzled speaking voice is dialed up to eleven as Almodóvar brings these two men closer and closer together.

It’s no surprise that even Almodóvar’s short film is drenched in passionate colors. The reds and greens particularly pop, and Pascal is swoon-worthy in a lime green suit early on in the film. Almodóvar can do more in 31 minutes than some directors can do in three hours.

You can read our TIFF coverage–including a conversation with Almodóvar–here.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Wes Anderson’s Roald Dahl adaptation is a confection unto itself. With a dependable legion of Anderson collaborators (Benedict Cumberbatch, Ben Kingsley, Dev Patel, and more) it is certainly the most star-studded entry on the shortlist.

The story (wonderful story, that is) is almost irrelevant, because Anderson makes this sucker move like crazy. Much like how Asteroid City had a lot of performers enacting stories, Henry Sugar’s set pieces move in and out as Cumberbatch and company tell the story of a wealthy bachelor who uses his vast inherited fortune to back his gambling habits. There’s also Kingsley as a performer who can see even with his eyes closed, and then, of course, Ralph Fiennes plays Dahl himself in a bright yellow room in a cozy chair.

If you are an Anderson fan, you will swoon over this. I love how Patel insists on speaking to the camera as much as possible when explaining every conversation he recalls. It jams every bit of colorful twee into 37 minutes.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar is streaming now on Netflix.

Yellow
There is a lot of history and political circumstance surrounding the Chadari shop in Elham Ehsas’ Yellow. On the surface, this is a film about one woman’s ordinary transaction in a clothing shop, but there is so much going on just beyond the frame.

Laila steps into the Kabul shop looking for a Chadari after the Taliban seized power back, and we instantly wonder if she has grown up not knowing the strict hold the group forces on women. The shop clerk, played by Ehsas, assists her in finding the right garment, and she almost laughs out of discomfort when she realizes the blue Chadaris don’t allow her to see. They cover every inch of her except for the netted slot for her to look through. As she takes off every robe, we realize that she is, just by trying on clothes, bucking at the Taliban’s rules. As someone who is obsessed with costume design, I was delighted to see an article of clothing be brought front and center to serve as the piece that the story hinges upon.

I couldn’t help but wonder how Laila will adjust to wearing this garment. Will she drown under its heavy weight? Will that weight seep into her body and feel it in her soul and heart? It’s a distressing thought and an unanswered question.

You can watch Yellow and read our interview with Ehsas here. 

Who Makes the Cut?
Things are a bit tricky right from the get-go. For the first time, the Academy is allowing everyone to vote in the nomination round when the members of the Short Films and Feature Animation, Directors, Producers and Writers Branches narrowed down the nominations previously. Would Almodóvar’s The Human Voice have landed a slot in the final five if voting was determined by everybody a few years ago? Normally, I would’ve said that Strange Way and Henry Sugar should consider their shortlist mentions as their prize since the Live Action Short category doesn’t always cater to big names or big stars.

This year, I would reconsider that with Henry Sugar having the edge. When I attended the In Conversation with… series and Almodóvar’s film screened, some people mentioned to me that they were more thrilled by the Q&A than the film itself, despite loving the chemistry between Hawk and Pascal and loving the visuals. Is that the general consensus? If Anderson’s film wins the “battle of the super-famous directors,” that could mean that Netflix has two films in the race for the first time. Harriman’s The After is one of the most high-profile shorts of the entire year, so I have a hard time seeing that film miss.

Ehsas’ Yellow feels perfect for a nomination here. If you follow the Live Action Short Film race every year, there is something about it that feels like it will resonate with voters. There is a running, not-so-serious-joke-but-kind-of-serious-joke that sometimes voters will vote based just on the title? If we apply that to this first round (a lot of people say that in reference to selecting a winner), people might vote for Red, White and Blue when they see it on the ballot. That’s not to be reductive–they will also vote for it, because of Choudhury’s construction and emotional wallop of a story.

With Live Action Short Film particularly, the Academy likes a good story, so it will be interesting to see how the group as a whole selects their five with such a strong list. Will multiple films about death make it in? Will they gravitate to humor?

Predictions:
The After
The Anne Frank Gift Shop
Red, White and Blue
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar
Yellow

Watch out for:
Good Boy
Invincible
Invisible Border
Knight of Fortune
Strange Way of Life

My biggest hope:
An Avocado Pit