Live Action Shorts - all nominees

A word about this year's nominees...

With the exception of one of these films, this was an incredibly hard batch to watch.  I'll describe each film below, they were almost all outstanding but not an easy group to watch as a unit.  I do recommend finding a way to see these films, but if you can space them out, that would be better than watching them all at once.  And now I'll explain why.... spoilers abound in this post, so if you prefer to wait until you've seen the films, save this one for later.

Live Action Short - Rodrigo Sorogoyen and María del Puy Alvarado

Madre is the short film from Spain.  A woman and her mother have come home from a day out and they are talking without a care.  Suddenly, the woman receives a call from her 6 year old son who is out on a trip through France and Spain with his father, her ex-husband.  The boy is on a beach but he doesn't know where, doesn't know the name, doesn't even know which country he is in, and his father has left him alone while the dad went to retrieve something from the car.  He has been stranded alone for what seems too long, and his cell phone battery is running out.  Hysterical, his mother does everything she can to stay on the phone with boy while also trying to get help.  Making matters worse, a mysterious man has appeared on the beach and the boy doesn't know what he is there for.  When the cell battery goes dead, we (and the mom) know almost nothing about where he is, where his father is, if he is safe, if the man who has approached is a kidnapper, and if this mother will ever see her child again.  It is some of the best acting I've seen in a short.  But it's a heart wrencher.

Live Action Short - Jeremy Comte and Maria Gracia Turgeon

Two tween boys are running around deserted areas of their town playing a weird game of tricking each other.  The points seem to be scored based on who falls for something the other sets up, who reacts to any strange situation.  It's a lot of "gotcha, made you look" nonsense.  When they run into a quarry, Fauve (the boy pictured in the poster) gets stuck in some quicksand but being on the edge of the marsh, he is able to get himself out.  His friend barely believes that he is actually stuck, so he doesn't come to Fauve's aid while the kid is stuck and truly panicking.  When Fauve frees himself, he gets revenge by throwing his friend into a deeper part of the quicksand, and it is nearly too late when both boys realize that what is happening is not a joke, not a trick, but a very deadly situation.  Fauve runs to find help, but the boys have finally gotten themselves into a situation that can't be joked away.

Live Action Short - Marianne Farley and Marie-Hélène Panisset

Marguerite is the lightest of the films with an elderly woman who is being cared for by a young home health care worker, Rachel.  When Rachel reveals that she is in a relationship with another woman, Marguerite recalls a younger time in her life when she also was in love with a woman.  "But it was a different time," she says, and shares that she never told the object of her affection of her feelings.  To see young Rachel deliver not only the amazing physical care she is there to render, but to also tend to Marguerite's emotional side is a touching and beautiful respite from the other films.

Live Action Short - Vincent Lambe and Darren Mahon

Detainment was one of the most horrifying of the Live Action shorts, and for this landscape, that is saying a lot.  It recalls the kidnapping and murder of a 2 year old baby James Bulgur, and how the police interviewed the two 10 year old perpetrators of the crime.  I strongly caution you against googling the actual crime, the details (both those portrayed in the film and those excluded) so horrifying as hard to leave behind once you know the facts of the case.  In fact, some of the details were so gruesome, they weren't even shared with the jury in the case.  Jon and Robbie, the two young murderers, were the youngest ever to be convicted in adult court in Britain.  Both young actors who portrayed them in this film should get some sort of commendation for how superbly the reenacted the interviews on screen.  This again, was a difficult film to watch.

Live Action Short - Guy Nattiv and Jaime Ray Newman

Completing the set of truly disgusting stories in the Live Action category, Skin shows a family of neo-Nazis who love their guns and their white supremacy, and practice irresponsible parenting that no rational person would endorse.  They live among and play with their community of idiots.  When the family goes to the supermarket for groceries, a black man at another register entertains their son by playing with an action figure.  The two share some giggles and it's nothing that any person hasn't done in line when making eye contact with a sweet kid.  But neo-Nazi dad doesn't like a black man talking to his son however harmlessly, and the situation escalates to the point where he and his friends beat the living daylights out of the black man while his wife and two kids watch helplessly in the car.  But this is not where the story ends.  The injured man's friends (and his son) kidnap the perpetrator and tattoo his entire body in black ink.  He is literally now a black man.  They drop him off in his neighborhood and he makes his way back to his own home, not totally aware of what has happened to him since his kidnapping.  Thinking that the dad is a black intruder, the mom pulls a gun but realizes in time that it is her husband.  Not so for the child who has been taught how to use shotguns for most of his life.  He shoots the "black" intruder to death as he has been taught to do, not realizing that he has just killed his own father.

Madre trailer:

Fauve the film:

Marguerite trailer:

Detainment trailer:

Skin trailer: