Breaking Down the Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action & Documentary

Orchestras, child poverty, the death penalty, and robots: these films have got 'em all.

Feb 28, 2025

The live action and documentary shorts may be the two least-viewed categories of the entire Academy Awards. (This sounds rude, but look at IMDb and Letterboxd view counts.) But the Oscars provide an unrivaled platform for these filmmakers: far more people will watch these films than their non-nominated brethren.

My personal preference for short films leans toward the experimental, but the Academy branches for these categories tend to nominate far more conventional productions. Usually, at least one of the nominees will be excruciatingly bad. (Remember the David Oyelowo-starring The After from last year? Unfortunately, I do.) But this year has a pretty good crop of short films; even the “worst” one is merely decent!

Here’s my rundown on this year’s nominees for Live Action Short Film and Documentary Short Subject, along with my predictions for what will win on Oscar night. If you haven’t seen them already, hopefully this will inspire you to watch them — most are readily accessible — or at least help you win your predictions pool. Links to watch the films are provided when they are available, or you can see the entire short film package in a theater near you.

Live Action Short Film

The Short Film Branch of the Academy seems to favor works with a strong emphasis on social advocacy, based on past years and the current crop of contenders. The films in this category have a reputation for being quite depressing, and these five films won’t really disabuse you of that notion. However, they are diverse in language — you’ll hear English, Dutch, Croatian, Xhosa, and Hindi spoken across these films — and in subject matter. (And this may be a coincidence, but all but one film are framed with a widescreen “scope” aspect ratio.)

The films are arranged in order of my least favorite to most favorite, but again, most of these are pretty good!

Anuja

Nominees: Adam J. Graves and Suchitra Mattai. Available on Netflix.

There are some lazy, yet accurate, comparisons with this mission-driven social drama about two orphaned sisters living in Delhi: All We Imagine As Light but with kids, or Bicycle Thieves crossed with Slumdog Millionaire. The titular Anuja works in a garment factory with her older sister, barely making ends meet. A schoolteacher urges her to take the entrance exam for a prestigious boarding school, recognizing her innate talent with numbers. But there are two big barriers to the new life promised by a proper education: a 400 rupee exam fee and the factory boss who wants to use Anuja’s prodigious math skills for himself. It all comes to a head with one fateful decision: between school and work, choosing the future or the present.

Made in collaboration with an Indian non-profit that supports street children, viewers will be won over by the performance by Sajda Pathan, who was once a child laborer herself1. Anuja counts Mindy Kaling as an executive producer and was acquired by Netflix, certainly lending it the biggest Hollywood backing of the five nominees in this category. But due to the film’s limited scope, Anuja hews a bit too closely to those Slumdog Millionaire tropes without offering fresh insight or deep characterization.

A Lien

Nominees: Sam Cutler-Kreutz and David Cutler-Kreutz. Streaming on Vimeo.

An undocumented immigrant visits Immigration Services, accompanied by his American wife and their five year old daughter, for a green card interview when ICE conducts a raid. It’s set in 2017 — a quick glance at a TV shows Trump talking about Hurricane Harvey — but it could have literally taken place today. Although all five of the nominees speak to contemporary concerns, A Lien is by far the most topical of the bunch. It’s a harrowing thriller that highlights one of the many absurdities of the American immigration process: try to do the right thing and become a citizen, and you’ll walk into a trap. The fraternal directing duo of Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz rely a bit too much on shaky cameras and histrionics, but perhaps this is a moment where we should be loudly denouncing inhumanity.

I think that A Lien will win the Oscar, as it’s a timely film that effectively uses its fourteen-minute runtime.

The Last Ranger

Nominees: Cindy Lee and Darwin Shaw.

Based on true events, this mission-driven production shines a light on illegal rhino poaching in South Africa. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, a game reserve has emptied out of visitors and employees, leaving Khuselwa — the last ranger of the film’s title — and her manager to keep watch over the rhinos, giraffes, and elephants that populate the park. A young girl spends her day cruising through the reserve with Khuselwa while her father desperately looks for work in a tourist economy devoid of tourists, which slowly sets them on a collision course that ends in tragedy.

There are sweeping shots that highlight South Africa’s natural beauty, and director Cindy Lee skillfully maneuvers us from chill nature vibes to violent terror, even as we feel creeping dread from the film’s initial scenes. Like most of the other nominees, this film is a work of advocacy, highlighting the important yet dangerous conservation work that is being done to protect wildlife.

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

Nominees: Nebojša Slijepčević and Danijel Pek. Available to rent on Vimeo.

At the height of the Bosnian War in 1993, a train passing through the countryside is stopped by a Serbian paramilitary group, who begin rounding up passengers they suspect to be Muslim. One man (who kinda looks like a Croatian Raúl Esparza) notices that the young stranger sitting across from him is fearful of being found out as the footsteps of the army men get closer and closer. This Cannes award-winner is a dramatization of a real-life event, during which a man could not, ahem, remain silent in the face of ethnic cleansing.

In the railroad car, we find a microcosm of society witnessing injustice. One person quietly comforts the frightened man, but doesn’t speak up to defend him. A girl keeps her headphones on, tuning out the unfolding atrocity. Others silently look on, maybe some of them support this. Croatian filmmaker Nebojša Slijepčević makes smart, subtle directing choices that introduce rising dread from the very first frame. The claustrophobic, square-ish aspect ratio boxes in the characters, who we mostly see in tight close-ups. It’s only thirteen minutes long, and every edit is made with precision to emphasize one message: authoritarianism cannot be fought with compliance, and it cannot be fought alone.

International viewers coming into this without context, such as myself, will understand this film’s significance only after looking up the real-life story on Wikipedia. Even without that background, the story still works because of its enclosed nature. It doesn’t take a scholar of Balkan history to know when bloodlust is in the air.

I'm Not a Robot

Nominees: Victoria Warmerdam and Trent. Streaming on YouTube via The New Yorker.

Loses a few points for beginning with an overdone choral rendition of “Creep,” but this existential comedy quickly won me back. Lara, an employee of a music company, is mixing that Radiohead cover when a computer update requires her to fill in a CAPTCHA — those annoying quizzes where you have to select all the boxes that contain a car or a bridge or a traffic light — meant to distinguish humans from automatons. She fails the test. She tries again. She keeps failing. Is… is she a robot, Lara wonders? What does that say about her boyfriend? Is this just a Dutch remake of Companion?

This was my favorite of the live action shorts, and coincidentally the funniest: those of us who have worked in an office will identify with Lara as she tries and fails to find a place for a private phone call. Maybe you have been stymied by those visual pop quizzes and wondered if you were, in fact, a robot. Thanks to a few well-placed twists, the Black Mirror-lite satire turns to the existential, probing what separates human life from all other forms, animal or android. I’m Not a Robot has a simple concept with a contained narrative (it doesn’t feel like the launching point for a feature-length film), and most importantly, it doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Documentary Short Subject

While the feature-length documentaries nominated this year were international (none of them were filmed in the US), the short film counterparts keep it closer to home, with all but one featuring American subjects. Three films are concerned with the criminal justice system, and the other two are about a female member of an orchestra. Funny how that worked out!

(As before, the films are arranged in order of my least favorite to most favorite, but even my least favorite is quite good!)

The Only Girl in the Orchestra

Nominees: Molly O'Brien and Lisa Remington. Available on Netflix.

A personal tribute to Orin O’Brien, the first woman to ever be a full-time member of the New York Philharmonic. The legendary double bassist’s niece tells the story of her remarkable journey, from being hired by Leonard Bernstein to retiring after 55 years in the NY Phil. Media coverage at the time focused on her looks and her gender instead of her talent. O’Brien remains vivacious even at the age of 87, speedwalking to the Lincoln Center (familiar ground for this correspondent) and expertly plucking the strings of her chosen instrument, a supporting bedrock of the symphony. A touching, if fleeting, testimony to a remarkable musician in the twilight of her life.

Death by Numbers

Nominees: Kim A. Snyder and Janique L. Robillard.

An intimate profile of Sam Fuentes, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting. After experiencing that horrific trauma, certain numbers became seared into her mind: “five minutes and 32 seconds from first shot to last. One bullet in my leg. Fifteen stitches to close it. Seventeen killed.” We follow Fuentes throughout the assailant’s sentencing trial, where she is compelled to testify to help the jury decide whether to commit the killer to the death penalty or life without parole, and later makes a statement to the court about how the massacre has affected her. Much of the story plays out in courtroom footage, which takes us away from an otherwise stark tale of anger, pain, and resilience. The film’s director, Kim A. Snyder, has built a close relationship with her subject, and it shows by how much insight we get into Fuentes’s personal experience without venturing into the exploitative. Death By Numbers elides more uncomfortable questions about the morality of the death penalty, and the overbearing score doesn’t help matters. But it artfully makes the case for victim impact statements as an important step on the path from trauma to closure.

Instruments of a Beating Heart

Nominees: Ema Ryan Yamazaki and Eric Nyari. Streaming on Vimeo and YouTube via The New York Times.

There are parallels to The Only Girl in the Orchestra, particularly with the importance of working in unison and fitting in. But while that other orchestra-related, Beethoven-playing nominee is about a master at the end of her career, Instruments of a Beating Heart highlights a young girl who is just learning to play (and she’s not the only girl in this orchestra). This slice-of-Wiseman vérité chronicles the rehearsals for a first-grade recital of “Ode to Joy.” (Mercifully for the viewer, their teacher plays the piano while the six-year-olds perform with a variety of percussion instruments, from taiko drums to tambourines.) Centering on Ayame, a cymbal player who struggles to memorize her parts, the film slyly reveals how the Japanese education system reinforces the country’s societal norms. If it feels like it was cut down from a more longitudinal study of this school, that’s because it’s an excerpt from Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s feature-length The Making of a Japanese. (She also edited the nominated doc feature Black Box Diaries.)

I Am Ready, Warden

Nominees: Smriti Mundhra and Maya Gnyp. Available on Paramount+.

This wrenching, humanistic film begins six days before John Henry Ramirez is scheduled to be executed for murdering a gas station attendant during a robbery. Smriti Mundhra, now a two-time Oscar nominee and the creator of Indian Matchmaking, tells Ramirez’s story, as well as those of the killer's son and the victim's son. It’s a hard watch, but I’m astonished by the multifaceted portrait that the director has assembled. The local District Attorney, who morally opposes the death penalty, tries to halt the execution. Ramirez comes to terms with his impending death. Aaron Castro, the son of the man that Ramirez killed, prepares himself to see justice carried out for his father’s death. Through these personal perspectives, we grapple with the ethics and effects of capital punishment. It’s a documentary that leaves us with questions rather than answers, and one of the final scenes is so powerfully raw that you can’t believe a camera was recording it.

Incident

Nominees: Bill Morrison and Jamie Kalven. Streaming on Vimeo and YouTube via The New Yorker.

Film artist Bill Morrison typically works with ancient film materials, salvaging them and crafting new narratives out of decaying material. But with Incident, he employs his methods with much more recent footage: bodycam and surveillance camera recordings taken on July 14, 2018, when a white Chicago cop shoots and kills a Black man in broad daylight during a botched police stop. What you see and hear is built entirely from this material, with no added narration or music (a good amount of the film plays without sound), which makes the film all the more damning.

A constantly shifting split-screen carries us from the buildup to the incident through its aftermath, unfolding in real time. Crowds of bystanders start to gather, immediately protesting the killing of a local barber. Meanwhile, the police officer who did it is whisked away in a patrol car where he’s immediately told that he did nothing wrong. As chilling as it is to see this all play out so quickly, this is only what the police allowed themselves to say and do when their body cameras were turned on. “Just don’t say nothing on your camera,” admonishes a superior. Even as they’re aware that they are being recorded, we see how they reflexively fabricate a false narrative. There may be recording devices, but the police control what they capture; there’s no such thing as a truly objective record. In this way, Morrison meditates on the very nature of documentary filmmaking. You can only work with the material you’ve got.

In recent years, there seems to be one experimental Documentary Short that snags a nomination (but never wins). Incident is the most artsy of the doc shorts, and it would get my vote if I were in the Academy (though I Am Ready, Warden is a very close second).

TL;DR

If you just wanted a summary (and maybe scrolled to the bottom to look for one), here are my rankings of the nominated Live Action and Documentary shorts. But even the fifth-ranked one is pretty solid and worth your time! And if you have seen these shorts, let me know your thoughts!

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In a sense, she still is, given her new career as an actor.