The Oscar-nominated short films make their way to theaters nationwide once again, in a series of feature-length compilations: animated, live-action and documentary.
Here is a look at some of the films in this year’s program, beginning with the animated
1. “Bear Story,”
directed by Gabriel Osorio.
In it, a bear tells the story of his life through a diorama.
2. “Prologue,” a British short
directed by Richard Williams and produced by Imogen Sutton,
tells an antiwar story in line drawings.
3.“Sanjay’s Super Team,”
directed by Sanjay Patel,
follows an Indian-American boy who prefers his action figures to his father’s Hindu prayer rituals. But he comes up with a compromise.
4. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos
directed by Konstantin Bronzit.
Friends who are training to be cosmonauts are at the heart of the Russian “,”
5. Don Hertzfeldt’s "World of Tomorrow "
A bleak future is glimpsed in minimalist animation in Don Hertzfeldt’s which Stephen Holden calls “the best and most minimalist entry.”
6. In Basil Khalil and Eric Dupont’s “Ave Maria,”
an Israeli family’s car breaks down in front of a convent of Palestinian nuns.
7. “Day One”
directed by Henry Hughes,
It is about the first day of work for a U. S. military interpreter in Afghanistan.
8. Patrick Vollrath’s “Everything Will Be Okay”
It is about a divorced father who takes his 8-year-old daughter on an unexpected trip. Stephen Holden writes that the film is “a heart-rending, impeccably executed soap opera episode.”
9. In Jamie Donoughue’s “Shok,”
a friendship is challenged during the Kosovo war.
10. Benjamin Cleary and Serena Armitage’s “Stutterer”
It follows a typographer with a speech impediment who is faced with the challenge of meeting a woman he has been communicating with online.
11. The Liberian documentary “Body Team 12,”
directed by David Darg,It focuses on a woman on a medical team tasked with collecting the bodies of victims during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
12. “Chau, Beyond the Lines,”
directed by Courtney Marsh,
It follows a teenager growing up in a Vietnamese care center for children affected by Agent Orange.
13. “Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah”
It is Adam Benzine’s exploration of the work of the director Claude Lanzmann.Stephen Holden writes that the film is “a useful companion to Mr. Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary about the Holocaust.”
14. “A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness”
It follows a survivor of an attempted honor killing in Pakistan.
15. “Last Day of Freedom”
It is an animated telling of the story of a man who committed a capital crime and his brother, who had to decide whether or not to turn him in. “It will break your heart,” Stephen Holden writes.
