Live-action short films span variety of genres
The Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Live Action are less consistently downbeat “miserabalist” entries this year, thankfully.
Writer-director Meryam Joobeur’s award-winning “Brotherhood” tells a unique story, set in Tunisia, Joobeur’s ancestral home, where a shepherd patriarch (Mohamed Grayaa) reacts angrily when his oldest son, who has been off fighting in Syria, returns home with a new young Syrian wife (perhaps “The Syrian Wife” might have been a better title?). The film, which is beautifully shot, addresses issues some viewers will not grasp, although the conflict between father and prodigal son, in this case a soldier, who may have fought for the wrong side, is arguably universal. Joobeur’s visuals are breathtaking. Her narrative skills are less impressive.
Also set in Tunisia, France’s “NEFTA Football Club,” directed by Yves Piat and Damien Megherbi, is a tale of two brothers (Eltayef Dahoui and Mohamed Ali Avari), who find a donkey wearing headphones and carrying bags of white powder in the desert. This sounds like the start of a neo-noir. But it ends up more like an old-fashioned tall tale, complete with a kicker — or is that a striker? — of an ending.
Documentary filmmaker Marshall Curry’s “The Neighbors’ Window” comes across like a modern-day version of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic “Rear Window.” In this case, we get a story about a youngish New York City couple with children, who become fascinated by the sexual antics of their new younger next-door neighbors across the courtyard, who have not put any curtains up to cover their windows and do not seem to notice that they are being spied upon. Lame? It’s pretty close, although lead Maria Drizia somehow makes binocular gazing seem not as creepy as it is. This is Curry’s fourth Academy Award nomination.
The most harrowing of the five nominees is “Saria.” Based on a true story, the film, directed by award-winning American filmmaker Bryan Buckley of Sudbury, aka “King of the Super Bowl” is set in 2017 in Guatemala, where two female orphans, Saria (Esefania Tellez) and older sister Ximena (Gabriela Ramirez), are wards of the Virgen de la Asuncion Safe Home, where they suffer at the hands of cruel caretakers. Together, they plot to stage a mass escape to America. “Saria” is arguably an example of the award-magnet “miserabalist” genre.
In “A Sister,” we get a minicrime thriller about a young woman (Selma Alaoui), a mother, who is in a car with a strange and perhaps dangerous man (Guillaujme Duhesme) and has nothing but a lifeline to an emergency call center, a facility with the technology to track her and keep her alive. Written and directed by Belgian filmmaker Delphine Girard, the film captures the panic of a woman who might be in the car of a serial killer, She is, however, not without skills to get the police on the phone and convince the driver her caller is her sister, who is babysitting. “A Sister” is a genuine nailbiter.
(“Oscar Nominated Short Films 2020: Live Action” contains anguish, sexually suggestive images and lifethreatening action.)