‘The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films’ Review: Small Tales, Big Ideas

This year, the Oscar-nominated short films are being presented in three programs: live action, animation and documentary. Each program is reviewed below by a separate critic.

Live Action

Rarely is it the case that every nominee in a particular Oscar category feels equally deserving of attention, but this year’s program of live action shorts is particularly strong. All show situations range from mildly uncomfortable to downright terrifying, yet the quality of the filmmaking takes center stage.

Anchored by a wise and wonderful lead performance from Anna Dzieduszycka, the Polish film “The Dress” follows Julia, a motel maid with dwarfism, as she tries to ease her loneliness and lose her virginity. A date with a handsome truck driver promises to do both, with troubling consequences. Filmed in beautifully soft light and directed by Tadeusz Lysiak in artful close-ups, this affecting and upsetting look at sex and disability reminds us that tall, dark strangers aren’t always a romantic prize.

“On My Mind,” the sad-sweet entry from the Danish director Martin Strange-Hansen, doesn’t at first seem at all romantic, but just wait. When a strange, mournful man (Rasmus Hammerich) walks into a bar and begs to sing one special song on the karaoke machine, his deceptively simple request will soon be revealed as, quite literally, a matter of life or death.

In the darkly humorous dystopia of “Please Hold,” a 19-minute nightmare set in a near-future world almost completely controlled by artificial intelligence, a young man (Erick Lopez) is arrested by a police drone and pressured to take a plea deal for an unknown crime. While he fumes in a hellscape of touch screens and disembodied voices — “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that!” — the Mexican American director KD Dávila delivers a shockingly clever satire of the privatized prison system and the elusiveness of justice.

Dreams of an education are dashed when Sezim (a terrific Alina Turdumamatova), the young Kyrgyz woman at the center of “Ala Kachuu (Take and Run),” is kidnapped and forced into marriage with a stranger. With empathy and energy, the German-Swiss director Maria Brendle uses Sezim’s youthful resilience as a cudgel against the repressive customs of rural Kyrgyzstan, a region where so-called bride kidnapping is believed to be a common practice.

Preparations for a more joyful wedding open “The Long Goodbye,” Aneil Karia’s visceral film accompaniment to the actor and musician Riz Ahmed’s 2020 concept album of the same name. In a slight 12 minutes, Karia whisks us from scenes of happy chaos to abject horror, finally settling on fury as Ahmed, playing a brother of the bride, weaponizes his words and music to attack British racism. Powerful and tensely edited, this tiny movie says more in those few minutes than some movies manage in hours. JEANNETTE CATSOULIS

Animation

“Animation is not just for children,” Paul McCartney once said on an awards stage. “It is also for adults who take drugs.” The caution is apropos for the 2022 animated program of Oscar Nominated Shorts, although the “Yellow Submarine” star probably imagined more fun than what a doctor would prescribe for these anxiety-inducing films about heartbreak, resentment, torture and despair.

“Bestia,” by Hugo Covarrubias, is a brutal and beautifully executed bit of payback against Chile’s Íngrid Olderöck, a paramilitary major who, according to survivors, trained dogs to sexually violate opponents of the dictator Augusto Pinochet. Made of deceptively cuddly felt, Covarrubias’s stop-motion chiller follows Olderöck and her German Shepard into her nightmares, revealing her as a husk of a human hiding under a tight-lipped ceramic mask. Note the hairline crack at the temple of Olderöck’s near-expressionless face — a nod to a 1981 assassination attempt.

The Russian illustrator Anton Dyakov clearly admires “Rocky.” A poster of the Sylvester Stallone Oscar-winner pokes into the frame of Dyakov’s “Boxballet,” a simple, bittersweet tale about a declining boxer with a crush on a Swan Lake dancer under the thumb of a predatory male director. In this expressionistic fable, creeps have claws, limbs stretch like linguine noodles, and the would-be lovebirds must settle for much less than seven glitzy sequels.

The chain-smoker at the start of Alberto Mielgo’s restless stunner “The Windshield Wiper” resembles the artist himself, a visual consultant on “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” whose streaks of color and startling use of light position him as one of the foremost artists designing digital animation’s future. “What is love?” the man asks. In response, the film races through cynical vignettes scattered across the globe, and in one case, on a satellite above it.

For nearly 35 years, Joanna Quinn has pencil-sketched the adventures of Beryl, a raucous British factory worker who here reveals she always fancied herself an artist. “Affairs of the Art” finds Beryl stark nude and painting herself blue. But the spotlight is on Beryl’s macabre childhood and a string of dead pets. Yes, McCartney — even kids can be creeps. As a balm, Aardman Animations offers “Robin Robin,” the one cartoon suitable for families. This musical trifle celebrates an orphaned baby bird who must learn to use her wings. It’s saccharine fluff — and Oscar prognosticators have it as their front-runner. AMY NICHOLSON

Documentary

With three out of five nominees, Netflix is almost bigfooting this year’s documentary short category, but one of those three is a standout. “Audible,” directed by Matt Ogens, observes the high school football team at the Maryland School for the Deaf, zeroing in on one player, Amaree McKenstry. His senior year is eventful beyond the gridiron, as he navigates a tentative relationship and reconnects with the father who left him.

McKenstry says that while he cannot hear cheers, he is able to feel vibrations from running. The players approach football with a different perspective. (“A lot of the hearing teams don’t want to play us,” the coach says. “And most coaches don’t like to lose to deaf coaches.”) Ogens, without overdoing it, finds ways to appeal to viewers’ other senses, looking for tactile moments, like teenagers dancing to booming bass lines or team members slamming locker doors and flicking a light switch as they rev themselves to return to the field.

School memories also suffuse “When We Were Bullies.” In the early 1990s, the filmmaker, Jay Rosenblatt, had a random encounter with a former fifth-grade classmate from the 1965-6 school year. Both had remembered an incident when they and others had ganged up on an ostracized student. Years later, haunted that he had been a bully, Rosenblatt seeks out other classmates and their 92-year-old teacher. Not all remember the dust up, and Rosenblatt consciously leads the movie into a dead end. Still, “When We Were Bullies” plays with structure and animation in ways that leaven it.

Less successfully empathetic is “Lead Me Home,” a documentary on homelessness shot in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle from 2017 to 2020. It is simply too diffuse at this length; few of its 15 featured subjects emerge with clarity, although it has heart-rending moments, like when a mother explains why she shops for groceries and makes dinner for her children instead of accepting meals. The many aerial shots of encampments inadvertently call attention to the distant perspective of the filmmakers, Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk, whose overuse of time-lapse photography and unfortunate deployment of Coldplay’s “Midnight” suggest it’s easier to lyricize poverty than explore it.

“Three Songs for Benazir,” from the directors Gulistan and Elizabeth Mirzaei, follows a father-to-be in a displaced-persons camp in Kabul who yearns to join the Afghan National Army, but others are convinced his place is in the poppy fields. A poignant epilogue set four years later confirms a downbeat fate, while also hinting at a great unrealized feature that might have been.

Finally, the New York Times Op-Doc “The Queen of Basketball,” directed by Ben Proudfoot, puts a spotlight on Lusia Harris, who died in January. In close-up, she recalls her career as a pathbreaking basketball player, the first woman to be officially drafted by an N.B.A. team. Released before Harris’s death, the movie now makes for a simple but moving memorial, interspersing Harris’s recollections with clips of key games and headlines. BEN KENIGSBERG

The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action
Not rated. In English and several other languages, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 1 minute. In theaters.

The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Animated
Not rated. In English and several other languages, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 37 minutes. In theaters.

The 2022 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary
Not rated. In English and several other languages, with subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 39 minutes. In theaters.