#a lien

[socialistwh0r3]

*send an ask to submit a snub

Snub winner for each category will go head-to-head with official nominations winner

[moviemosaics]

All Short Films Nominated for an Oscar at the 97th Academy Awards

[heywoodsays]

Live Action Short: One of these things is not like the other

The nominees are:

A Lien

Anuja

I’m Not a Robot

The Last Ranger

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Three of this year’s nominees for this year’s Live Action Short Osar seem like public awareness movies.

India’s Anuja very much fit that bill and does so openly, promoting its campaign for education street and working children during the credits.

Based on true events, South Africa’s The Last Ranger tackles the issue of rhino poaching.

A Lien hits closer to home, addressing the regular practice of luring undocumented immigrants to mandatory appointments to secure their path to citizenship, only to be apprehended by I.C.E. agents. Told through the eyes of one fictional family, A Lien is an emotionally gripping thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat for its full 15 minutes. Given the current political climate, I think it must be the frontrunner.

A potential spoiler is The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, which is the most awarded of the films so far. Most of its awards have been at smaller European festivals, but the Palme d’Or at Cannes is an impressive notch on its belt. While not dealing with a current political issue (it’s set in 1993 Bosnia), its message of standing up for the oppressed is pertinent today.

By far the most unique nominee in this category is I’m Not a Robot. While at work, a Dutch music producer repeatedly fails a CAPTCHA test to prove she’s not a robot. She calls customer service to have the issue sorted out and then has to wrestle with an unexpected question — might she actually be a robot? The film takes several unexpected turns to lead you on a wild ride in just 22 minutes.

However, given the thematic focus on this year’s nominees, I think a piece like A Lien is more likely to pull through. There’s also a rather strong record of the winner of this category being an English language film.

Who will win: A Lien

But look out for: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Who I’d vote for: A Lien

◄ Previous: Documentary Feature | Next: Animated Short ►

INTRODUCTION | FEATURES AND SHORTS: International Feature | Animated Feature | Documentary Feature | Live Action Short | Animated Short | Documentary Short | TRADE CRAFTS: Cinematography | Film Editing | Production Design | Costume Design | Makeup and Hairstyling | Sound | Visual Effects | Original Score | Original Song | TOP CATEGORIES: Original Screenplay | Adapted Screenplay | Supporting Actor | Supporting Actress | Actor | Actress | Director | Picture | TOP 10 FILMS OF 2024

[dweemeister]

Best Live Action Short Film Nominees for the 97th Academy Awards (2025, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

This blog, since 2013, has been the site of my write-ups to the Oscar-nominated short film packages – a personal tradition for myself and for this blog. This omnibus write-up is done in memory of two now-shuttered theaters that were very important to this tradition – the Nickelodeon Theatre of Santa Cruz, California (2012 and 2013) and the Regency South Coast Village of Santa Ana, California (2014-2020, 2022-2024).

If you are an American or Canadian resident interested in supporting the short film filmmakers in theaters (and you should, as very few of those who work in short films are as affluent as your big-name directors and actors), check your local participating theaters here.

Without further ado, here are the nominees for the Best Live Action Short Film at this year’s Oscars. The write-ups for this year’s nominees in Documentary Short and Animated Short are complete (see the links!). Films predominantly in a language other than English are listed with their nation(s) of origin.

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (2024, Croatia)

Fascinatingly, the one short film of the five nominees that provides the least context for audiences is the one that most justifies its short film format. Director-writer Nebojša Slijepčević’s The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (Čovjek koji nije mogao šutjeti in the original Croatian) dramatizes the event leading up to a massacre during the Yugoslav Wars. One winter day, a man named Dragan (Goran Bogdan) is en route by train from Belgarde (Serbia) to Bar (Montenegro). Well before their scheduled arrival, the train comes to an abrupt halt. A paramilitary group – non-uniformed, declining to identify themselves, their group, or their purpose – clamber onto the passenger cars, asking all passengers to produce identification documents at once. Dragan complies, but before the soldiers come to his compartment, the man sitting across from him, Milan (Silvio Mumelaš), fearfully admits he has no paperwork to present. Dragan gives assurances everything will be fine, but those assurances ring hollow when no one confronts a soldier aggressively questioning and later threatening Milan minutes later. Well, almost no one. Retired military officer Tomo Buzov (Dragan Mićanović) speaks up. For that, he – not Milan – will, under force, disembark the train.

The film is dedicated to Buzov, who was murdered by members of the fascist and anti-Muslim White Eagles paramilitary group during the 1993 Štrpci massacre in what is today Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slijepčević’s decision to frame this film through the eyes of a would-be hero is intriguing. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent – qualifying for these Academy Awards by winning the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at Cannes – exemplifies the tenuous line between the morally courageous people most wish to be and those who back that aspiration up with their actions. Effective, nervy performances from the acting ensemble enliven relatively recent history. The decisions to not show, but imply, violence and to keep the camera looking away from the other passenger in the compartment makes the first shot of Tomo Buzov – which comes very late in the film – all the more startling.

My rating: 8/10

Anuja (2024, India)

The winner of Best Live Action Short at the 2024 HollyShorts Film Festival, Anuja, distributed by Netflix, is a film that bears all the marks of an inexperienced director guilty of overreach. Nine-year-old Anuja (Sajda Pathan) lives with her older sister, Palak (Ananya Shanbhag) – one assumes their parents are absent or deceased. The two work in a garment sweatshop in Delhi, under the sinister gaze of a shifty floor manager (Sushil Parwana) and the direction of the smarmy Mr. Verma (Nagesh Bhonsle). One morning, a teacher named Mr. Mishra (Gulshan Walia) asks to see Anuja – whom he hears is a mathematical genius (although we never see evidence of this). Mr. Mishra asks Anuja to take a school entrance exam, leaving an aghast Mr. Verma to dismiss his visitor. When Palak hears of this, she decides to smuggle garment scraps out of the sweatshop, turn into bags, and raise the ₹400 (roughly $4.50 in 2025’s USD) fee for the exam. Mr. Verma, however, has other plans for both sisters.

Anuja, with headline-grabbing producers including Priyanka Chopra and Mindy Kaling (not as famous: producer Guneet Monga, who produced the winner from two years ago, The Elephant Whisperers), is strangely edited (he undermines all of the scenes in which the sisters are spending time together while not working or selling bags with bizarre cuts) to go along with that signature over-polished Netflix sharpness. The film also comes dangerously close to being a commercial for the Salaam Baalak Trust, a non-profit non-governmental organization (NGO) that provides basic literacy and schooling for children in India. No question that is a noble cause, but to have Mr. Mishra essentially provide the Trust’s mission statement during his scenes and the footage of the Trust’s students watching Anuja for the first time blurs the boundaries between a narrative piece of art and a promotional piece. Anuja’s non-ending is an even stranger decision, robbing the film of an emotional catharsis – whether or not the film deserves it is another debate entirely – that it has been building towards.

My rating: 6/10

I'm Not a Robot (2023, Belgium/Netherlands)

Enough! Stop it! Stop using grim covers of Radiohead’s “Creep” for movies, television, and promotional materials! The song is tired as it is, and a more daring thing to do would be to compose a piece to achieve the unsettling mood one seeks. Or just find a different song!

With that out of my system, director-writer Victoria Warmerdam's I’m Not a Robot (qualifying after winning Best Short at the 2023 Sitges Film Festival, and distributed to most of the world by The New Yorker) covers ground that many artificial intelligence (AI)-skeptic films have tread before. Its opening minutes are the strongest, as Dutch music producer Lara (Ellen Parren) is enjoying a cover of “Creep” when the music abruptly halts. Her computer asks her to install new software, and provides a CAPTCHA to prove she is not a robot. She fails on each attempt and calls tech support. Whoever is on the phone on the other end is anything but reassuring, as they suggest that Lara might actually be a robot. As her day progresses, Lara finds herself increasingly irked by suggestions that she might not be human.

Lara’s Kafkaesque – or, to use more contemporary references, Twilight Zone- and Black Mirror-esque – dilemma is at its most impactful when it leans into its absurdity and the dark humor that springs from it. But once Lara finishes the call with tech support and takes a post-CAPTCHA test, Ik ben geen robot grinds to a screeching halt for all its novelty. Warmerdam has a promising premise, but never returns to the heights of the opening minutes, although I am sure philosophy students will strongly disagree. Ellen Parren, has one of the best performances among the five nominees, and saves the film from being generic – very little distinguishes I’m Not a Robot from this growing subgenre of sci-fi aside from its humor and handsome production design.

My rating: 7/10

A Lien (2023)

Directed by David and Sam Cutler-Kreutz and executive produced by Adam McKay (2015’s The Big Short, the execrable Don’t Look Up from 2021), A Lien (pronounced “alien”, not “a lien”) showcases a revolting situation, but does so using revolting filmmaking. It is the embodiment of what I despise most in documentary or live action short filmmaking. Given current Academy tastes (this year’s nominations, as a whole, felt like as if the Academy was trying to send the current occupant of the White House a message), A Lien is almost certainly and undeservedly the frontrunner.

Couple Oscar and Sophia Gomez (William Martinez and Victoria Ratermanis, respectively) are driving to a Department of Homeland Security office for the former’s green card interview (Oscar is Salvadoran American; green card holders are more formally known as “lawful permanent residents”). Their young daughter, Nina (Koralyn Rivera) is accompanying them. Sophia, on the drive there, and while stepping into the DHS office, is clearly nervous. When Oscar leaves for the interview, he takes Nina with him (why would you take your antsy child with you to a Very Important Interview?), leaving Sophia to further panic when she sees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents hauling undocumented immigrants into custody. C-SPAN coverage of a Donald Trump speech lambasting immigrants sends her into a panic – no government office is playing C-SPAN on full blast nor is lit as dourly as the film portrays, come the fuck on – spiraling into a terrible moment that will shred the lives of the Gomez family.

As much as I might agree with the film’s anger towards contemporary American immigration policy and its enforcement practices, that does not give A Lien a pass for the shittiest filmmaking in this category for many years. The constant use of close-up hand-held cinematography and frequent, nauseating editing is purposeful, but its overuse brings A Lien to the point of aurally and visually assaulting the viewer. There is no nuance to this hyperbolic acting – no sense of love shared between the couple, no attempting to hide distress during scary moments, and dialogue and emoting that is obnoxiously and (given the precarious situation) unrealistically loud.

A Lien commits the sin of placing its message first, its filmmaking after. It becomes a browbeating public service announcement, fit for liberal Americans receptive to virtue signaling and for those who want only to reinforce their worldview.

My rating: 4/10

The Last Ranger (2024, South Africa)

Compared to A Lien, Cindy Lee’s The Last Ranger – based on actual events – is a palate cleanser! At the Amakhala Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, we find a young Xhosa girl named Litha (Liyabona Mroqoza as a child, Kamogelo Ndawo as an adult) who lives among the staff and rangers at the reserve. Her friend, the ranger Khuselwa (Avumile Qongqo), asks if she would like to see a rhino. Litha jumps at the chance. Along the way, Litha and Khuselwa talk about poachers and the COVID-19 pandemic’s affect on tourism at the reserve. Soon after, they find the rhino Thandi, whom Kuselwa has a personal connection to. But just as they arrive, a group of poachers – armed with a sniper rifle loaded with a big game tranquilizer, more conventional firearms, and a chainsaw to cut off rhino horns – take aim Thandi.

An anti-poaching narrative seems quaint in the 2020s (if a filmmaker in the 2020s is going to address nature, they invariably touch climate change instead), having been in vogue at the turn of the twenty-first century. Nevertheless, the message is a welcome one and benefits from outstanding acting from Liyabona Mroqoza. The vistas of the Amakhala Game Reserve are extraordinary, and Lee knows how to beautifully capture the immensity of this landscape on film. If anything, The Last Ranger is a bit too morally simplistic: poaching stems from economic desperation and poverty. The emotional punch when The Last Ranger identifies ones of its poacher characters does not land cleanly, although the follow-up – some sort of Xhosa song or prayer – recovers from that misstep. The film becomes one of the better entries into the exhausted canon of live-action short films involving childhood trauma. One can thank some admirable filmmaking and strong performances for that distinction.

My rating: 7.5/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog. Half-points are always rounded down.

From previous years:  85th Academy Awards (2013) 87th (2015) 88th (2016) 89th (2017) 90th (2018) 91st (2019) 92nd (2020) 93rd (2021) 94th (2022) 95th (2023) 96th (2024)

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[greensparty]

Green's Party's Guide to the 2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films

I am absolutely thrilled to be doing my 8th annual guide to the Oscar Nominated Short Films (read my 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023  and 2024 guides). Anyone who knows me knows I am a longtime champion of the Short Film categories for Animation, Live Action and Documentary at the Academy Awards, mainly because I have made short films and I know how hard it can be to tell a story in a short amount of time.

2025 movie poster

This year’s nominated short films are available from ShortsTV both in theaters and online. I’ve watched all of them and here are my thoughts and predictions:

Best Animated Short Film:

This category is always cool because of the varying styles of animation. Magic Candies (Japan) is about a lonely boy Dong-Dong, who decides to buy a bag of candies instead of marbles and begins seeing some strange things. At times, the animation seemed almost like puppetry or woodmation for this imaginative tale. In the Shadow of the Cypress (Iran) is about a former captain now living in a secluded house with his daughter and suffering from PTSD. It's a silent movie in that there is no dialogue. Yuck! (France) is about kids at a Summer camp who are grossed out by older people kissing, until the main boy wants to give it a try with a girl camper. Wander to Wonder (UK) is about some miniature characters in a 1980s children's TV show, who are left alone in the studio after the show's originator dies. It boasts notable actor Toby Jones as one of the voices. This is very creative animation, but I'm sure animated purists will take issue with some of the live action pieces being combined into the film. In Beautiful Men (Belgium / France / Netherlands) three brothers stay at a hotel in Istanbul for hair transplants. This is the one animated short nominee that could have easily been a raunchy adult dramedy if it was live action, but within animation it was able to encompass more mature themes like older men with insecurities.

Will Win: Wander to Wonder seems to be getting some momentum and it's got some notable cast members. I think the live action element, might dissuade some animators, but it's charming enough to just win!

Should Win: Beautiful Men was the most original and entertaining of this year's animation nominees.

Best Live Action Short Film:

What a category this year! First up is Netflix's Anuja (U.S. in Hindi), which boasts star power in its producer Mindy Kaling. This shows a 9-year-old girl working in a garment factory and she is given an opportunity to go to school and has to make a decision. It had very stylish cinematography and tugged at the heartstrings. The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent (Croatia) takes place on a train that is suddenly stopped by military forces in an ethnic cleansing operation in 1993. There is an undercurrent of tension and fear throughout, even as we the audience are not seeing the horrors beyond the train, it's felt in a harrowing way. The New Yorker's I'm Not a Robot  (Belgium / Netherlands) begins with a woman at her workplace doing one of those logins to prove you're not a robot. When she has trouble logging in, she takes a survey that assesses she might be a bot and that causes her world to unravel. I liked the idea and the build-up, even if the ending was a letdown. A Lien is about a family dealing with a dangerous immigration process. In less than 15 minutes, this drama packs in more than a lot of features even try for. The Last Ranger (South Africa) is about young Litha, who is introduced to a game reserve by the last remaining ranger, and they are ambushed by poachers as they try to save the rhinos. This film truly makes the argument for seeing the Oscar Nominated Shorts in a movie theater. The scenic locale is breath-taking on a small screen, but probably looked way better on a big screen.

Will Win: Any of these could easily win for different reasons, but A Lien is very of-the-moment with Trump's immigration policy being a hot-button issue.

Should Win: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent gets a ton of credit for having a lot to say without actually showing the horrors it alludes to it. But I think A Lien is the best of any of this Live Action Shorts batch!

Best Documentary Short Film:

This year's Documentary Short Film nominees cover a lot of varied ground: New York Times' Instruments of a Beating Heart (Japan) is about a first grade class in a Tokyo elementary school that are going to perform "Ode to Joy" for the incoming first students and the subject is a girl who was selected to play the drums in the song. You are rooting for her as she gets so scared and upset during rehearsals, but it shows the power of music, which was a similar theme in last year's winner The Last Repair Shop. The New Yorker's Incident is a reconstruction of a 2018 police shooting in Chicago. It is a unique documentary in that it is made up entirely of actual surveillance and bodycam footage. It is disturbing to watch and there's also long stretches with no sound, forcing the viewer to watch what's happening that much more. MTV Documentary Films' I am Ready, Warden is directed by Smriti Mundhra, who was nominated in this category for 2019's St. Louis Superman (which I praised in my 2020 Shorts Guide). This very intense doc looks at a convicted murderer on death row. Prior to his execution he tries to reach out to his son and the victim's son. It looks at the situation from all sides. Very sobering to say the least. Netflix's The Only Girl in the Orchestra is about double bassist Orin O'Brien, who recently retired from the New York Philharmonic. The doc is directed by her niece Molly and it's a conversational look at Orin's life growing up with Old Hollywood actor parents, her love of music and her career, including re-connecting with former students. The Kennedy / Marshall Company (yes, THE Frank Marshall is a producer of this) present Death by Numbers about Samantha Fuentes, one of the survivors of the Parkland High School shooting. It shows her grappling with feelings of anger and sadness as she prepares to face the shooter in his trial. To say this is powerful would be an understatement. It documents this subject's life, memories and the trial, it used animation, poetry and art to enhance Fuentes' narration / interviews.

Will Win: There is a lot of heavy subjects in this year's category, which is why they might cancel each other out and The Only Girl in the Orchestra, which is more uplifting and celebratory, could steal the thunder.

Should Win: This one is difficult to choose, but I think Death By Numbers was the one that left me the most speechless and went beyond just a documentary short and felt like a moving life experience.

This year’s Oscar Nominated Short Films can be seen online from ShortsTV as well as select movie theaters including programs at Coolidge Corner Theatre and Alamo Drafthouse Boston.

[randomrichards]

A LIEN:

Green card interview

Gets raided by ICE agents

Family’s crisis

[jontheblogcentric]

Oscars 2024 Short Films Review: Live-Action

With the Oscar nominations come the annual showing of the nominated short films. Once again, I had the luck of seeing the short films nominated for this year’s Academy Awards. Only one is an American-made film. The rest are from multiple countries. Here’s my review of the films nominated for Best Live-Action Short Film for 2024: A Lien (dirs. Davit Cutler-Kreutz and Sam Cutler-Kreutz) – The…

[bob-the-movie-man-film-reviews]

The Oscars "Best Short Film (Live Action)" Nominees, 2025.

Our #onemannsmovies review of the Oscar "Live Action Short" film nominees for 2025 including Anuja on Netflix.

A One Mann’s Movies review of the nominations for the Oscars in the “Best Short Film (Live Action)” Category. I’ve not done separate reviews for these Oscar “Short Film” nominees but am including brief reviews for them in this one post. A Lien (2023). Bob the Movie Man Rating: Plot Summary: A young family are faced with danger and deception through a formal US immigration…

[rapidhighway]

[mischeva]

Knuckles and all his clones except I redesigned all of them to make them more distinct and NOT RELATED

[deco27-unofficial]

[aneverydaything]

Day 2211, 12 July 2024

Elantica 'The Boulder' is a sculpture by Tom & Lien Dekyvere. It is made from old circuit boards. It can be found sandwiched between buildings outside the Elizabeth Line station in Canary Wharf, London

[bekkomi]

Little does anyone know, that she is in her depression era (that is a lie)

[iingezo]

LIEN x JIKIN

[l-wandering-etranger]

feel like the main take of mxtx novels that I think gets buried in all the headcanons and discourse is that when a character- mainly the mc does something right or good it's not because they are doing it to be heroic or upstanding people. it's because if they don't do it, no one else will.