Documentary Shorts - 5 nominees

Edith + Eddie, Laura Checkoway and Thomas Lee Wright
Edith and Eddie are newlyweds who got married at the ages of 95 and 96.  Their love story is adorable but their lives are interrupted by Edith's daughters who have fought over conservatorship of her.  The court assigns a legal guardian who never comes to meet Edith, but takes the daughter's side who wants to move Edith to Florida and she wants to sell Edith's home, all of which are against her own wishes.  She wants to stay with her husband Eddie, but the legal guardian who knows very little about her life has the power to make all of Edith's decisions.  Ultimately, this film is a love story with a very troubling (and brief) examination of elder rights in America.

Heaven is a Traffic Jam on the 405, Frank Stiefel

This is the compelling story of artist Mindy Alper, an examination of her troubled childhood with an emotionally abusive father and a distant mother, and how she has used her incredible art to deal with her emotions.  Mindy has been through a lot including a bucket full of medications and electroshock therapy, so it's occasionally difficult to understand her speech, but her deep humility and character shine through.  Ultimately, her work is the star of the film, as are the community of kind friends, teachers, and therapists who she has made into family.

Heroin(e), Elaine McMillion Sheldon and Kerrin Sheldon

This short film focuses in on Huntington, West Virginia, colloquially known as the overdose capitol of the United States.  The film follows three incredible women, all doing their best to make a difference, show compassion, and change the way that we view drug addition.  They are the first female fire station chief in the entire state of West Virginia, a drug court judge, and the head of "Brown Bag Ministry" who drives around once a week at night finding addicts and prostitutes, offers them meals and love, and assistance in getting into drug rehabilitation centers and even just places for them to sleep safely at night.  These three women never give up on people, even when they are saving addicts for the 50th time, sentencing them to prison, or just checking in to make sure they are alive and staying clean.  There are equal parts joy and despair in this film - we meet a former addict who was saved by the fire chief over 50 times and who is totally clean now, and, just as the ceremony honoring the former addicts graduating from drug court, the alarm goes off again with another overdose in town.  This film captures the devastating opioid crisis in America so effectively and it is available on Netflix.

Knife Skills, Thomas Lennon

Another short film available on Netflix (Netflix is killing it this year!), Knife Skills is an incredible movie about a restaurant in Ohio that aspires to be the best traditional French restaurant in America.  As if that is not a high enough goal, the restaurant is almost solely staffed by former convicts who must learn skills in 6 weeks to make the place a success.  The only people in the restaurant who are not former convicts are the head chef (a real French chef) and his sous chef.  Even the owner and proprietor of the restaurant is a former convict himself, and he is deeply committed to breaking the prison cycle for these trainees.  They learn to be chefs, to run the front of the house, to be bartenders and sommeliers, he even trains one of the staff members to be a fromager (cheese expert).  Not everyone graduates from the program, some people get back into trouble, some people haven't yet learned how to work with a boss, but those who do graduate are changed forever.  It's an incredibly powerful film.

Traffic Stop, Kate Davis and David Heilbroner

Traffic Stop was the hardest of the 5 nominees to watch.  A young African American woman with a masters degree who is an incredible elementary school teacher is pulled over for speeding.  Just over 100 pounds soaking wet, the camera footage captures how a police officer pulls her from the car and after an uncomfortable conversation, slams her into the ground, abuses her, and loses his mind because she is a little bit slow to follow his instructions.  Her story is so much more than the abuses she suffered.  It's easy to look at a moment by moment and say, "well, she was disrespectful" or "she didn't follow instructions fast enough," but we must be reminded too that as a young black woman, rightly or wrongly, she also was terrified of being the next victim of police abuse in America.  There is little question that the police officer started off in the right, but his escalation of the situation is mind boggling to watch and the epitome of poor training and abuse of power, and if you're not a little bit outraged, then you are perhaps not paying attention to what's happening in our world.  This woman is no thug (not that a "thug" would have deserved her treatment either), she is the epitome of the American dream having lifted herself up by the bootstraps, so why did the situation escalate so quickly?  It's a tough subject, but unbelievably important.