All About the Oscars Live Action Short Film Nominees
- Alyssa Klein
- Feb 11, 2018
- 3 min read
Soo I saw the 2018 Academy Awards live action short film nominees today.
I really need a hug.
Three of the five shorts are hard to watch. Like, you'll be covering your eyes expecting something bad to happen the whole time kind of hard to watch. A fourth is supposed to be a tough watch. And a fifth, the oddball of this very serious group, is an Australian comedy. Here are my thoughts on each, listed below in order of how much I liked them.
My Nephew Emmett (Kevin Wilson, Jr., USA)
This historical short from NYU film alum Kevin Wilson, Jr. portrays the finals days of fourteen-year-old Emmett Till's life through the eyes of his great-uncle, Mose Wright. Taking us back to late August 1955, Mississippi, Wilson, Jr. was inspired by footage of Wright speaking shortly after the brutal lynching and murder of his nephew by two white men, J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, who kidnapped, tortured, and killed Till, an African American teenager from Chicago who was visiting family in Mississippi, for allegedly whistling at a white woman, Bryant's wife. Milam and Bryant were acquitted of their crimes by an all-white jury. And in the 2000s, Carolyn Bryant admitted her claims were false.
Till's tragic death is regarded as one of the gravest injustices in American history as well as a catalyst of the Civil Rights movement. After My Nephew Emmett, there are a few upcoming Emmett Till film projects in the works, including one that Taraji P. Henson will produce and star in and John Singleton (Boyz n the Hood) will direct.
Bottom line: Wilson, Jr. is a gifted storyteller, and this is one of U.S. history's most important stories to tell. I hope this wins the Oscar and puts Wilson, Jr. on the map.
DeKalb Elementary (Reed Van Dyk, USA)
Los Angeles-based writer/director Reed Van Dyk's DeKalb Elementary is absolutely harrowing. It's inspired by a 911 call placed during a school shooting in DeKalb County, Georgia, in 2013, in which Antoinette Tuff, a bookkeeper at Ronald E. McNair Discovery Learning Academy, managed to talk down Michael Brandon Hill after he stormed the school with a gun. Van Dyk takes us inside the office room in which Tuff used her radical love to convince Hill to surrender. Having not known the story beforehand, I was utterly terrified, waiting for things to turn deadly. Fortunately, they did not. And in Tuff, we have a true hero in the face of our own worst nightmare.
Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend this one for everyone (including myself), but it's hard to deny this film is done well.
The Silent Child (Chris Overton and Rachel Shenton, UK)
I didn't want to like The Silent Child. Fuck it, I actually don't like it. But, it does have an important takeaway. And it did get it across to me. So good job, filmmakers.
This British short inspired by true events tells the story of a profoundly deaf four-year-old girl whose mom, well, sucks. When we meet young Libby, she is living in a world of complete silence, unable to communicate with anyone, let alone her very clueless family. The film follows Libby's journey as she begins to work with a young and dedicated social worker, who her mom hires prior to Libby entering school. Despite the mom's reservations, the social worker proceeds to teach Libby to communicate using sign language. They make a ton of progress, and Libby finally has someone in the world to communicate with. But then, well, the mom sucks.
Bottom line: Though not my thing (the word sentimental comes to mind), The Silent Child ends with a call to action: for sign language to be a mandatory addition to all school systems. It's a fight for deaf rights I admittedly knew very little about. So thank you, The Silent Child, for educating me.
The Eleven O'Clock (Derin Seale and Josh Lawson, Australia)
The Eleven O'Clock is nothing groundbreaking, but shown fourth in the series of five otherwise devastating shorts, it's a lighthearted break from all the sadness. The Australian Abbott and Costello-like joke goes like this: a white dude psychiatrist walks into a doctors office. A temp greets him. His 11:00 is with another white dude who believes he is the psychiatrist. But wait, who is the actual psychiatrist? It goes in the direction I was hoping it would, which is cool.
Bottom line: it's cute.
Watu Wote: All of Us (Katja Benrath and Tobias Rosen, Germany)
I felt very uncomfortable watching Watu Wote: All of Us, which dramatizes the true story of an attack by al-Shabab militants on a bus in northern Kenya in December 2015, in which Muslim passengers on board defended the Christian passengers on board by refusing to give up their identities, telling the attackers that they would need to kill all of them. It's directed by a German woman, Katja Benrath.
Bottom line: Enough said.
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