Shared humanity
THERE’S A THEME RUNNING THROUGH THIS YEAR’S OSCAR-NOMINATED SHORTS
It’ s more than mere flag- waving when I say that Canada deserves to win the Oscar for best animated short this year. The nominated film is Blind Vaysha, from Bulgarian- born director Theodore Ushev, and it tells the story of a woman who can see the future with one eye, the past with the other, but never the present.
It’s a startling and creative effort produced by the National Film Board of Canada, whose 74 nominations stretch back to 1941, when Warclouds in the Pacific from director Stuart Legg was nominated in the Academy’s first recognition of short documentaries. (It lost to Churchill’s Island, also by Legg.)
But don’t take my word for it. Toronto and Vancouver cinemas are screening all five nominated shorts and live- action shorts in separate programs. ( Documentary shorts may follow soon.) Blind Vaysha has competition from Borrowed Time ( an atmospheric tale of a Wild West sheriff ); Pearl ( a father- daughter story that unintentionally had me cringing at their poor driving habits); and Pear Cider and Cigarettes, a not-for-kids tale of a hedonist who moves to China for a kidney transplant.
There’s also Piper, which played in front of Finding Dory last summer, and tells the story of an adorable sandpiper. This is Pixar’s 12 th nomination for the prize since Luxo Jr. in 1986, though it hasn’t had a win since 2000’s For the Birds. Canada’s latest Oscar for best animated short was in 2006 for The Danish Poet by Torill Kove.
In the best live-action category, the oddsmakers’ favourite is Silent Nights, about a romance between a Danish woman who vol- unteers at a homeless shelter, and a Ghanian refugee. But I was torn between the Spanish short Timecode, in which two parking lot security guards find an interesting way to communicate through dance; and La femme et le TGV from Switzerland, about an unlikely friendship between the driver of a high- speed train and the woman whose house he roars past each day.
Also in t he r unning: Ennemis intérieurs ( Enemies Within), in which a Muslim man from Algeria tries to apply for French citizenship in the 1990s, but finds he must pay a steep price to be accepted; and Mindenki ( Sing), about a Hungarian girl whose music teacher is playing a cruel psychological game with the pupils in her choir.
In the documentary short film contest there’s a Canadian connection to the sweet film Joe’s Violin, which tells the story of a Holocaust survivor who donates his beloved instrument to a poor school district. Its credits include Raphaela Neihausen, a Toronto-raised producer and wife of TIFF programmer Thom Powers.
The rest of the documentary nominees: Extremis, about life ( and death) in the Intensive Care Unit at Highland Hospital in Oakland, Calif.; 4.1 Miles, which looks at the rescue of Turkish refugees by the inhabitants of a tiny Greek island; The White Helmets, about volunteers in Aleppo, Syria, who risk their lives to save civilians trapped and injured by the bombings; and Watani: My Homeland, about a Syrian f amily’s journey to a new home in Germany. Clearly, there’s a theme in the air.