For most of the year, the short film categories are a mystery. The next time you attend a film festival, try and catch a collection of short films–they might land on the shortlist. This week Joey Moser will be breaking down the positives of every shortlisted short film eligible in the Animated Short Film, Documentary Short Subject, and Live Action Short Film categories. Today, we are looking at the colorful worlds in the Animated Short Film shortlist. Catch up to this year’s Live Action shortlist here.
For the first time in a while, Disney and Pixar are not represented on this shortlist (I believe their only entry was Welcome to the Club, a Simpsons-fied short), and the only film from a bigger studio is Apple TV+’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse. Memory is a huge factor in a lot of these shorts, whether it’s longing for your homeland and your father (More Than I Want to Remember), a loving testimonial to your mom (New Moon), or of adolescence (My Year of Dicks). Last year, 82 animated shorts qualified, and that went down just by one. 81 films, according to the Academy’s website, were considered for this year’s award. I have linked films if they were available online.
Black Slide
When you are afraid of something as a kid, it feels monumental. You are anxious that someone will find out what spooks you and call you chicken, and something like an ominous, covered waterslide can be the source of a lot of social jitters. In Uri Lotan’s Black Slide, one boy confronts his fears by taking the scariest plunge, and he comes to terms with some feelings he’s been avoiding.
Every day, 11-year old Eviah hops the fence over of Aqua Fun to try and face down the waterslide that lives in infamy. The tubes snake around each other and they shake as a helpless youngster barrels towards the pool at the bottom. Every day, Eviah gets closer and closer to taking the plunge, but something else is bothering him and we don’t understand what it is until he finally faces his fear.
Black Slide plays with universal themes while pulling the rug out from under you. The animation of Eviah’s face, in particular emotional moments, is very effective.
Black Slide is available to stream via The New Yorker‘s Screening Room.
The Boy, the Mole, The Fox and the Horse
There is something quite beautiful and simple about Peter Baynton and Charlie Mackesy’s adaptation of the children’s book (also written by Mackesy). There are important lessons of kindness and helping one another baked right in the dialogue that could reach younger viewers.
A boy is lost in a snowy landscape, and he is joined, one by one, by (you guessed it) a mole, a fox, and a horse. As they wander in search for a home, they ask each other things like, ‘Imagine how we’d be if we were less afraid’ or that helping is the bravest thing you can do. Yes, it teaches kids things, but the adults should be the ones listening since we spend so much time yelling at one another and insisting our opinions are the correct one. I would rather spend time with the mole, thank you very much.
Boasting a voice cast including Gabriel Byrne, Idris Elba, and Tom Hollander, The Boy, the Mo,le, the Fox and the Horse could be our frontrunner for how it reminds us of a storybook. It uses shadow and light beautifully, the character designs are very distinct. Yes, I am obsessed with the Mole. I love him.
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is available on Apple TV+.
The Debutante
Societal expectations and absurdism collide in Elizabeth Hobbs’ spirited and exciting film, The Debutante.
A young woman loathes the idea of being a debutante, but her daily trips to the zoo console her. “I knew the animals better than some of the girls of my age,” she says as she watches monkeys swing from branch to branch and birds fly overhead. When our young charge decides to bring a hyena to a debutante ball in her, we wait in anticipation for all hell to break loose.
Hobbs uses collage and paint to recall a refined era, but it moves so quickly with bursts of color that she pays homage to the exuberance of youth. It joyously gives the middle finger to society and the confines of women. I love how some images of the young woman look like an old Hollywood starlet and the narration carries a dignified weight to it.
The Flying Sailor
A sailor is launched into the air in the true retelling of the Halifax Explosion of 1917 in Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis’ contemplative film The Flying Sailor. The film serves to educate about an unknown incident as well as ask big questions about life and death.
Some may be shocked to discover that a sailor was really hurled into the air and that he traveled, naked, over a mile before surviving the landing. As he twists and turns in the air, he recalls memories of his life and we question how fragile our journeys can be. The directors ventured in 3D animation for the first time, and they really balance the sailor’s gentle movements with the horrific destruction underneath him. He’s a pink orb floating down into a dark unknown.
You can watch my interview with the directors here, and the film is available via The New Yorker’s Screening Room.
The Garbage Man
Everyone has that relative that sparks conversation when the family gets together, especially if said relative isn’t in attendance. In Laura Gonçalves’ film, The Garbage Man, relatives take turns picking up stories in an ode to a member of their family, and he gets to watch from a framed picture on the wall.
“He bought many things from France,” one woman says as she drains her glass, a picture of Manuel Botão (Gonçalves’ late uncle) smiling behind her. In the picture, a monkey is perched on his shoulder, and it leaps down onto the table to investigate. It’s almost as if Manuel sent him to check things out before he considers coming down himself. In another anecdote, Manuel takes a broken washing machine to fix it, and shoves us inside to swirling blackness.
The colors are mostly muted creams and blacks, but then we get patches of light reds or yellows. It’s as if we are trying to remember the colors ourselves. It’s an affectionate tribute.
The Garbage Man is available to stream via The New Yorker’s Screening Room.
Ice Merchants
The story of Ice Merchants is very simple. A father and son live on the side of a steep mountain, and they parachute down to sell their ice to the town way, way down below. The use of perspective and motion make this one of the most satisfying films shortlisted this year.
There are few colors in João Gonzalez’s film–filled with orange-reds, browns, and icy blues, we immediately get a sense of the world perched on the side of this mountain. Our father and son plunge down every day to do their business, but things take an alarming turn when the water begins to not freeze. Something larger and alarming becomes clear very quickly. It transforms into an amazing tale of loss fueled by action, sound, and movement.
Told without words, Gonzalez has built a short film about letting go of that piece of heaven that you take solace in. It’s a film that hits on multiple levels without becoming too heavy or too preachy. I loved it.
Ice Merchants is available to stream via The New Yorker’s Screening Room.
It’s Nice in Here
“He can hear the inside of things,” Imani says about Crimson, her close friend who was nicknamed after the red-colored hoodie that he always wears. Robert-Jonathan Koeyers’s It’s Nice in Here is about how one moment shatters the lives of two different people and another example of how police brutality in America needs to be a continuous conversation.
This film is told in fragments, but both perspectives begin with love. Imani and Crimson share a closeness that cannot be truly defined. They’ve known each other since they were six years old, and that friendship has blossomed into something more sweet and daring. We then meet David, a police officer, who is impressed with his wife’s resilience when it comes to being a new mother. We see a long hallway of framed pictures in their home that signal the milestones that most of us want to get to. David’s job has put a strain on his everyday life, and it’s seeping into his psyche.
It’s Nice in Here cleverly uses overlapping, repetitive dialogue as Imani and David tell their sides leading up to a tragedy. It doesn’t blame anyone, and it gives weight to both people. It beautifully shows how memories come back suddenly and how we are unprepared for the weight they carry.
More Than I Want to Remember
A young woman’s past, family, and history dances in her mind all throughout Amy Bench’s More Than I Want to Remember. Most films paint memory with black-and-white imagery, but Bench’s film breathes in color. It’s gorgeous.
Mugeni, a Congolese refugee, recalls how her family was separated when a bomb destroys her village. Her family is split in many directions, and she knew that she had a choice: “I’m going to live or die,” she says early in the film. Mugeni eventually finds herself in Michigan living with an earnest family as she tries to connect with those she was separated from.
Mugeni’s narration is emotional. We only a glimpse of her her gorgeous face before it becomes animated, but we are with her for every breath, every ounce of joy that she finds along the way. We are always in step with her, and the lush colors are some of the best on this entire list of films.
More Than I Want to Remember is streaming on Paramount+.
My Year of Dicks
The specificity of Sara Gunnarsdóttir floored me–if you grew up in the ’90s, it will probably have the same effect on you. Based on the experiences of writer Pamela Ribon, My Year of Dicks will make the lovelorn feel very, very seen. I always say that while I am thirsty, I simply fall in love with every boy I see.
Told in five chapters of five very different experiences, we follow Pam’s determined quest to find the one she will lose her virginity to. If the script wasn’t hilarious and touching enough, Gunnarsdóttir’s film also utilizes different styles of animation and filmmaking to support how often Pam’s perspective changes. You, too, would act differently around the mysterious, edgy, pseudo-vampire (right?) David than you would around the aggressive beau who insists on suggesting a blowjob in the middle of a movie theater.
Dicks‘ strength (yeah, I am going with that) lies in how Pam is open with her audience. She takes our hand and views us as a friend. She may ask us our advice along the way or she might scoff at our true opinion of the boy she is currently making out with. It’s frank and sincere. Also, please, for the love of (insert queer obsessed actress here), nominate this film for the title. Thank you!
New Moon
Almost everyone has warm, encouraging thoughts about their mother, but the open-hearted film, New Moon, is such a beautiful ode to Black motherhood. Written by Colman Domingo and his husband, Raúl, it will make you reach for the phone and say hello to your mom.
Moon is a tribute to Domingo’s mother, and it was adapted from his own play, A Boy and His Soul. Young Jay Jay sits on the front porch of his West Philadelphia home with his mother, Edie, on a humid night. They wax poetic about their dreams and Aretha Franklin, and Domingo plays both the younger version of himself and his mother. Seriously, the voice work is amazing.
The hues of blue and green are gorgeous, and you feel like you don’t know what’s going to happen next even though they are just talking about places they want to go and things they want to do. I’ve seen the film a handful of times, and it’s such a bear hug of a film. I smile from ear to ear every time I watch it.
You can watch my interview with Colman and Raúl here.
An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe Him
This Australian stop-motion short is part Severance, part Office Space, and part…the last moments of The Lego Movie. Most importantly, however, is that An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe Him is a love letter to the creators of stop-motion animation.
An office worker is bored of trying to sell everyday items on the phone–has anyone successfully sold you a toaster when they called you? When he stumbles onto an ostrich in the elevator, he begins to question his existence entirely even though he never wonders how the bird made its way into his office. The ostrich knows the truth! Believe the bird!
As this office worker investigates the meaning of life, we see the mechanics of stop-motion animation as parts fall off and we see how much work an animator puts into creating flawless motion. For some of the film, the frame obscures the real world with a small screen, and we see people whizzing around as if we are watching them create An Ostrich before our very eyes. You know, “very few cartoons are broadcast live, it’s a terrible strain on the animator’s wrists.” We should consider ourselves lucky.
Passenger
Commuting sucks for a variety of reasons. A simple train ride gets a surreal journey in Juan Pablo Zaramella’s Passenger as a rider tries to untangle social cues en route to his destination.
When our cut paper hero steps onto his train, the first thing he must negotiate is where to sit. Will he be comfortable–where is the best place? When another person joins him, our protagonist doesn’t want him to sit next to him, because, when it comes right down to it, who wants a stranger to sit in the adjoining seat when there are dozens to choose from? Our personal space is very important to us, and the last thing we need is our ride to become another stressful thing to deal with.
The stark black-and-white paper cut outs are playful and rather aspirational. I love that the silhouette of our protagonist changes from being a flat image to something constructed depending on how he turns his head. The only real colors come in on the scribbles on everyone’s clothing.
Save Ralph
Ralph is a rabbit and a tester for cosmetic products. Even though he is blind in one eye and nearly deaf in one ear, he isn’t sore about his job. Well, physically, he’s sore, but he views human beings as vastly superior to animals.
Spencer Susser’s short is a bit shocking in its honesty, and he plays the entire film like a documentary that Ralph is participating in for the Humane Society International (the organization has praised the 4-minute short). With voice talent like Taika Waititi, Ricky Gervais, Zac Efron and Olivia Munn, Susser’s film is confrontational and unapologetic about the mistreatment of animals. The textures are also fantastic, especially when we see Ralph’s colorful apartment versus the cold, terrifying laboratory.
Save Ralph is available on the Humane Society of the United States’ YouTube page.
Sierra
Of all the films on this year’s shortlist, nothing yanked me through reactions like Sander Joon’s Sierra. It’s surreal and absurd and abstract and colorful and stupid and serious. I loved it. This is a film that quite literally can’t be described as much as it needs to be experienced.
A dad and his son are losing a race, and the son becomes a tire to help them finish. There are yipping frogs and themes of fatherhood and connection that I didn’t expect to love. It’s graphic and frenetic. I hope this Estonian film gets nominated just so more people find is and experience it. Hunt it down if you can.
Steakhouse
Cooking is meant to be a joyous, fulfilling experience, and it can be rather sensual and romantic. That’s not the case in Spela Cadez’s jaunty and startling, Steakhouse.
As Franc prepares a large steak at home, his wife, Liza, is preparing to leave work. She is surprised by her co-workers for her birthday, and she sticks around for cake and some drinks. When she arrives home, she finds the apartment filled with black smoke and an unhappy Franc is impatiently waiting for her at the dinner table.
Cadez’s film taps into our senses from the very beginning as we see Franc preparing the meal. We see the oil, the salt, and his care as he begins cooking. That is reversed by the darkness of the second half of the short, and it uses sound and cloudiness in a unique way to tell the story without dialogue. We begin to feel like we are in that room and we have to rub our eyes free from smoke.
Steakhouse is available via Short of the Week’s YouTube page.
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Which shorts do you think the Academy will go for? Which ones are you looking forward to checking out if they make the cut?
The Academy doesn’t always go for cutesy. They can, but it’s not a guarantee. Some audiences have said that The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse is “cheesy,” but it’s the most readily accessible and it’s based on a beloved book. I’m a sucker for it, and I think it elicits genuine emotion from those who watch it. Will they go for something meta and a nod to their industry (An Ostrich), or will they go for something with a message (Save Ralph)? Like the Live Action category, any combination of these films would be a great crop of nominees. Almost every entry has won multiple awards.
My gut says…
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
The Flying Sailor
Ice Merchants
New Moon
Fighting for that last slot…
It’s Nice in Here
My Year of Dicks
An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It
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