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dweemeister · 7 days ago

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Best Documentary 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.

Now, here are the nominees for the Best Documentary Short Film at this year’s Oscars. The write-ups for the Animated and Live Action Short categories are coming soon. Non-American films predominantly in a language other than English are listed with their nation(s) of origin.

Instruments of a Beating Heart (2024, Japan)

It is the final weeks of first grade for a collection of Japanese schoolchildren. As is tradition, the outgoing first graders will play Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” to welcome incoming first graders at an end-of-school year program. But before that performance, they have to go through auditions and several practice sessions. In Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s Instruments of a Beating Heart (from Japanese public broadcaster NHK and The New York Times), we concentrate on schoolgirl Ayame, who is overjoyed to learn that she will be playing cymbals after succeeding at her audition. But after a few mistakes during rehearsal that shows she has not been practicing, Ayame loses a bit of confidence after a teacher’s scolding (the teacher organizing the performances seems not to be a dedicated music instructor, but another teacher teaching the same grade). Yet Ayame, with the help of her fellow students and words of comfort from her homeroom teacher, perseveres from her bitter disappointment.

It would be easy to dismiss Instruments of a Beating Heart as the most inconsequential of this slate of nominees. The events within seem so much smaller than questions of criminal justice, forgiveness, feminism, and more. But to these outgoing first graders, the pressures of an audition, performing for incoming first graders, and learning to build one’s own confidence are deeply consequential. In addition to being an emotionally honest coming-of-age piece, Yamazaki’s film also shows the nature of Japanese schooling at the primary level. Though some Japanese might deny it, religion (Buddhism and Shintoism) and Confucian philosophy heavily influence their society (and many Asian societies) – which prioritizes collective efforts over individualism, deference to authority figures and elders. From the students cleaning their classrooms to the music teacher chastising Ayame (but not devaluing her as a person), we see the benefits and downsides to such a culture in a primary school context. The most focused of this year’s nominees also subtly reveals much concerning our personal values towards personal growth.

My rating: 9/10

Incident (2023)

In the summer of 2018, the city of Chicago was on edge during the trial of Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke (later convicted of murdering a 17-year-old black boy named Laquan McDonald). Amid that tension, experimental director Bill Morrison shows us – through inventively-spliced bodycam and surveillance camera footage – the fatal shooting of Harith “Snoop” Augustus by Chicago Police officer Dillan Haley on July 14, 2018 and the immediate aftermath. Morrison superimposes text on the screen to provide necessary identification and legal/political/situational context, with long stretches of silence punctuating the cruelty and tragedy of these moments. Perhaps the most infuriating aspect of Incident (which qualified by winning Best Documentary Short at the 2024 Florida Film Festival and distributed by The New Yorker) is how we see the Chicago PD officers concoct a false narrative – that Augustus was reaching for his gun (he was attempting to present his concealed carry license) – almost immediately after Haley uses his firearm. Those moments contrast with the occasional glimpse of bodycam footage of local residents expressing their fury towards the police, laying bare their distrust.

As honorable as Morrison’s intentions are and how valuable this footage is, Incident feels more like courtroom evidence than as cinema (although the inclusion of moments of community outrage would be inadmissible). Despite its fascinating editing scheme, there is a distinct lack of editorializing that, for some, might be a novel development across the unfortunately growing corpus of police brutality documentaries. Incident’s total reliance on the bodycam and surveillance footage provides a glimpse into the events of that day. However, I personally am uncomfortable with publicizing a rating here because I am uneasy – eerily recalling my concerns about 2017’s A Night at the Garden – about this film’s lack of an authorial stamp beyond its editing. Morrison may claim that his film has an “inherent objectivity”, but that is impossible in cinema. Especially with a film that so completely depends on its editing.

My rating: Rating withheld (I feel uncomfortable rating this film)

I Am Ready, Warden (2024)

On the evening of July 19, 2004 in Corpus Christi, Texas, John Henry Ramirez, the subject of Smriti Mundhra’s I Am Ready, Warden for MTV Documentary Films and Paramount+, murdered convenience store worker Pablo Castro by stabbing him twenty-nine times. Ramirez fled to Mexico, started a family there, and was eventually arrested and extradited to the United States in 2008. Convicted of murder and receiving a life sentence, Ramirez had exhausted almost all his legal pathways to stave off his execution when we first encounter him in this film – six days away from his scheduled execution. Then-District Attorney of Nueces County, Mark Gonzalez, and Ramirez’s godmother, Jan Trujillo (who met him while teaching inmate Bible study) attempt to achieve a final stay or a commutation from the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles and Governor Greg Abbott, but to no avail. While detailing Ramirez’s mindset in his final days, the film crucially alternates to the perspective of Aaron Castro, Pablo’s son, who struggles emotionally anytime his father’s killer makes any round of news.

Like Mundhra’s previously-nominated work (2019’s St. Louis Superman), Mundhra interrogates “systems that are designed to protect [her]”, as well as her fellow Americans. Securing remarkable permission from all parties involved, I Am Ready, Warden achieves a dignified balance – Ramirez claims some form of his humanity from the media, but his newfound religiosity and acceptance of responsibility in prison cannot excuse his actions (and he understands this); Aaron must find peace in balancing his desires for justice, acceptance, and ambivalence towards capital punishment. Through the wreckage that one horrible night wrought, the thesis of this film is evident. Whether or not the execution goes forth, Pablo Castro was still murdered and Aaron and his family will live with that terrible reality for the remainder of their days. Wisely, I Am Ready, Warden leaves open how much we can empathize with a man on death row and if he deserves anything resembling forgiveness in his final hours

My rating: 7.5/10

The Only Girl in the Orchestra (2023)

If one ever looks at older footage of classical music concerts, you will notice a distinct lack of women in the orchestra (okay, maybe there’s a woman harpist). At the New York Philharmonic, it was not until 1966 during Leonard Bernstein’s tenure as music director would the orchestra hire a full-time female musician. That musician: Orin O’Brien, double bassist (fellow instrumentalists, you would never have guessed double bass, right?). Her niece Molly O’Brien directs this profile, The Only Girl in the Orchestra, for Netflix. Born in 1935 to actors George O’Brien (1927’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans) and Marguerite Churchill (1930’s The Big Trail), Orin turned eighty-seven during the shoot, and was just about to retire from the NY Phil – but she still gives private lessons and teaches double bass players at the Manhattan School of Music and the Mannes College of Music. As the most topically scattered of the nominees, The Only Girl in the Orchestra briefly covers various topics surrounding Orin’s hiring to the NY Phil: how lonely it was to be the only woman in a professional orchestra, the sexism and unwanted attention from the press, the emotions of making music and how that changes over time, her love of teaching, how a retiring musician never truly steps away from music, and why Orin dislikes the spotlight.

Molly O’Brien’s film accomplishes its basic objectives: to show how Orin, now almost a nonagenarian, has aged so gracefully and has found, through music, a life that has left an imprint on others. Orin, as the reluctant subject, almost personifies her instrument – her very personality majorly assists a film lacking focus. As someone who played in school and private orchestras himself, the double bass is just one of those instruments that never receives its due. Rarely is it given the melody, and almost never do you hear bass solos. As Orin accepts about her chosen instrument: “[The double bass] is the floor under everybody that would collapse if it wasn’t secure.” Soloists and section leaders and conductors can only do so much; the rank-and-file musicians sitting rows deep into any orchestra shape its sound and soul as much as anyone.

My rating: 7/10

Death by Numbers (2024)

When Samantha “Sam” Fuentes survived the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018 after incurring a gunshot wound to the leg and behind her right eye, she could not have imagined how the events of that day would stay with her for the remainder of her life. Similar to I Am Ready, Warden, Death by Numbers – directed by Kim A. Snyder and narrated in a diary-like style by Sam – reflects on the ramification of deadly violence, and how it chains the survivors to a maelstrom of trauma, anxiety, depression, and guilt. Though the legal proceedings for the murderer takes up much of the film and American gun violence receives a few mentions, Death by Numbers is primarily a personal account on how Sam has navigated her trauma. The film poignantly interweaves Sam’s two appearances at the murderer’s death sentencing trial (he plead guilty to murder and attempted murder, but the state of Florida had a separate trial for the nature of his sentence) with her writing and narration.

Though Death by Numbers has some questionable inclusions in its footage that feel manufactured (such as Sam watching an explosive scene from 1957’s 12 Angry Men in her hotel room the night before giving a statement on behalf of her class), it is the emotional power of her narration that carries the film. Note the juxtaposition of her unfiltered narration to her final statement in court – the latter brimming on the edges of hatred towards the murderer, but Sam wisely restrains herself, as hatred would play into the hands of her would-be killer. Of the three criminal justice-adjacent or -themed films in this year’s slate, Death by Numbers is the one that most completely grasps at the themes it wishes to explore.

My rating: 8.5/10

^ 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: 88th Academy Awards (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.

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