GVN’s Guide To The 2025 Oscar-Nominated Short Films

If any category at the Academy Awards gets the annual short shrift, it’s the three that honor short films across animation, live action, and documentaries. In 2022, this trio – along with production design, film editing, makeup and hairstyling, original score, and sound – were absent from the telecast altogether, handed out before the ceremony began. All it took for the Academy to walk back that shortsighted move was a healthy amount of sensible outrage. The subsequent ceremonies gave out all 23 little gold men during the live broadcasts, and this year will follow suit.

It’s fair to note that the Oscar-nominated short films remain the least-seen films heading into each showcase. It doesn’t have to be that way, though! It’s become easier in recent years to see every nominated film ahead of the main event, thanks largely to the work of services like ShortsTV. Self-described as the “global home of short entertainment,” ShortsTV has brought all 15 nominated shorts to the big screen for audiences around the world since 2006, allowing those who don’t happen to stumble upon compelling, award-worthy short cinema at film festivals or via screener links to not only be fully informed heading into Oscar Sunday, but to discover fresh and rising talents in filmmaking.

The likes of Martin Scorsese, Sofia Coppola, Wes Anderson, Ari Aster, Lynne Ramsey, and the late, great David Lynch– all got their starts making shorts, introducing their talents to broader audiences. For a more recent example, look no further than Dìdi director Sean Wang, whose short Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó was nominated for Best Documentary Short Film at last year’s Oscars.  

If you’re searching for a precursor ahead of March 2’s ceremony, we’ve got you covered on that front. (But seriously: If you’re too busy to watch 15 shorts over the course of a few days, you’re too busy.)

Animation

If nothing else, it’s consistently enriching to see that the Academy’s animation branch – which was voted to oversee both the Best Animated Feature and Best Animated Short Film categories just last year – continues to evolve regarding the kinds of films it honors. The feature category once felt like an annual “Pixar/Disney Animation or bust” situation. While those titles continue to garner yearly nominations (see: Inside Out 2 this year), the last two Oscars in this category have gone to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron.

The Animated Short grouping, however, has long been an all-encompassing lot, honoring not only the Pixar shorts many of us grew up giggling through before our feature presentation began, but plenty of hand-drawn and non-traditionally animated works that expand the bounds of what the Finding Nemo’s of the world taught us long ago.

This year’s crop is no different, as none of the five contending titles fall under the umbrella of “conventionally” animated works. Better yet, they are all of varying subject matters, a treat that is typical for the ever-imaginative works of this category. The stop-motion film Beautiful Men, a Belgian-French-Dutch co-production from writer-director-animator Nicolas Keppens, centers on three bald-or-balding brothers who travel to Istanbul hoping to undergo hair transplant surgery on the cheap. The problem? Well, in the immediate future, there is only one available appointment, and all three siblings are itching to change their lives for the better through this procedure. But there’s plenty more beneath those clever, albeit superficial trappings.  Keppens’ emotional comedy eagerly tackles this trio’s gamut of insecurities with a thoughtful plunge into the psychological torment that sibling rivalry, changing appearances, and aging all bring on in different ways for every individual.

Similarly, Wander to Wonder (directed by Nina Gantz) and In the Shadow of the Cypress (from the Iranian directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani), distinctly depict the tribulations brought on by one’s inability to move on from their past. The former, a Dutch stop-motion production, is the story of the three miniature stars of a children’s TV show from the 80’s attempting to carry on its legacy after the host and creator has died. They freely roam the studio, frequently in the nude or in what’s left of their old costumes, silently reminiscing on what made them special all those years ago, only to learn that their escape from this decaying hut was one catastrophic miracle away. Despite the conceptual similarities to “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” this is far from safe for work, nor for children. Yet, its unique style and humorous scenario, coupled with a killer finale, may be enough to win voters’ hearts.

Banking on doing exactly that is Cypress, which hinges on the bond between a daughter and her PTSD-addled father, a former ship captain. He is hell-bent on harming himself by repeatedly bashing his head into a mirror, at least until his urges are tampered by his morning meds. Only the on-shore arrival of an unknown beast can make him stop and wonder whether leaving his demons in the past is for the best. Cypress is more intense than any of its four fellow nominees, which could give it the edge as the “serious” short in this quintet, though that’s a two-sided coin that could reward Wander to Wonder, the other frontrunner. 

On the outside looking in while being no less fascinating are the French short Yuck! (Loïc Espuche), a 2D trip that follows a group of vacationing children who find the kissing grownups all around them downright disgusting. There is also Magic Candies (Daisuke Nishio), a Japanese short about a young boy who gains the power to hear voices after buying a bag of candy. Both are heartfelt romp-adjacent, coming-of-age tales about kids learning to be themselves (and recognizing the truth behind their desires) through this wild journey we call life. Yuck!’s visual representation of that revelation is pink, glowing lips whenever someone wants to plant a smooch on another, and Magic Candies’ being the innermost thoughts of loved ones appear in the air like clouds of smoke that only its main character can see. These are thoughtfully cute entries that don’t quite match the raw power of past child-centric winners like 2019’s Hair Love or 2022’s The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse, which leads me to give the edge to something darker, yet still intriguing in its sense of humor.

Prediction: Wander to Wonder

Documentary

In a slight detour from shiny lips and hair transplant journeys, the Documentary Short section is, as ever, a less than jubilant affair, as this category has tended to honor timely films that tackle modern political and social issues in recent years. Perhaps the three most pointed examples are Incident, I Am Ready, Warden, and Death by Numbers, all short documentaries that focus on, well, murder in one way or another.

Bill Morrison’s Incident is the most ambitious of the nominees here in terms of its form, the half-hour short being entirely constructed from body-cam footage captured before and after the fatal shooting of a barber, Harith Augustus, by a Chicago police officer in 2018. Those who were able to catch The Perfect Neighbor at this year’s Sundance Film Festival might find it overly familiar given the similar stylistic approach that that documentary takes, but Morrison’s inventive short – which uses split screens to show what has occurred all at once, regardless of chronological order – is as true-crime as any documentary can get. 

Smriti Mundhra’s I Am Ready, Warden, meanwhile, steps behind bars to follow John Henry Ramirez, a former Marine awaiting his execution date in a Texas prison. Ramirez stabbed a convenience store worker to death in 2004, and that worker’s son, Aaron Castro, feels that Ramirez’s death will finally allow him to close the book on the darkest moment in his family’s past. Undoubtedly, Mundhra’s film will spark conversation with any viewer, not solely because of how the death penalty’s persistence in many states across the country remains a controversial sentence, but also because of how both men have made peace and grown through their respective psychological journeys. Its willingness to focus less on what precedes Ramirez’s execution and more on what follows makes its title a bit of an emotionally manipulative tool. Still, it also provides a distinct melancholic tone to the remainder of the 37-minute proceedings that allows for introspection aplenty, not just for Castro, but for any viewer with a moral compass.

Completing this unofficial trio is Kim A. Snyder’s Death by Numbers, a short written by Samantha Fuentes, one of the survivors of the tragic 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Like I Am Ready, Warden, Snyder’s doc picks up at the shooter’s sentencing, where Fuentes read a powerful statement to Nikolas Cruz, the shooter who was spared the death penalty at trial, a testimony that only somewhat drives the film’s emotional arc. Unfortunately, Snyder incorporates footage from Meshes in the Afternoon, the 1943 experimental short, a stylistic flourish that muddies the contents of what might have otherwise been a resounding portrait of grief and forgiveness.

Lacking in that area but certainly not in emotion are two music-related shorts. Molly O’Brien’s The Only Girl in the Orchestra is a too-plain profile of the double bassist Orin O’Brien, who became the first woman to join the New York Philharmonic as an orchestra member. Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s Instruments of a Beating Heart follows a student in Tokyo who auditions to play the cymbal in a performance of “Ode to Joy” at her primary school. The latter is Whiplash-coded despite its happy ending, while the former places a spotlight on a trailblazer who never wanted to shine, only to fit in because of her talents.

Neither of these final two nominees reinvent the wheel, but could feasibly walk away the victor here if voters are more keen to reward optimism than poignant, disturbing tearjerkers (much like 2023’s winner, The Last Repair Shop). I’m inclined to bet on one of the two films operating in a more devastating register, with Warden being the frontrunner. 

Prediction: I Am Ready, Warden

Live Action

At the top of the heap in the last (but certainly not least) short film category sits Nebojsa Slijepcevic’s The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, a riveting 14-minute thriller that won the short film Palme d’Or at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The film dramatizes the Štrpci massacre of 1993, in which 18 Muslim and 1 Croatian passengers were removed from a Montenegro-bound train by a Serbian paramilitary group and subsequently killed. Perhaps it’s not more interested in Dragan (Goran Bogdan), one of the many silent passengers on board, but the short deftly lends most of its attention to his face as its harrowing events unfold. We watch in real-time as he reacts to the train’s abrupt halt, to Serbian militants coming on board and asking for citizenship and identification papers, and to the removal of multiple passengers. Dragan’s internal alarm bells grow louder and inch outward, but never reach his mouth. That courageous burden instead belongs to Tomo Buzov (Dragan Mićanović), the lone non-Bosnian passenger to stand up to the attackers, resulting in his murder. (The film, which doesn’t depict any of the kills on screen, closes with a dedication to Buzov.) It’s a devastating picture, one that feels primed for victory here.

The one film that feels like it could play spoiler to is Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz’s A Lien, with its topical subject matter being the primary reason. When Oscar Gomez (William Martinez) enters a private room for his required Green Card interview, both he and his wife Sophia (Victoria Ratermanis) are unaware that ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) has essentially taken over the facility in which they are desperately seeking hope and planning to arrest and deport any undocumented immigrants who enter. It’s a terrifying scenario that many families face today, reinforcing its timeliness and cultural relevance.  While the Cutler-Kreutz brothers take the “easy” way out with their film’s conclusion, A Lien still manages to depict authentic heartbreak amidst our ever-darkening bureaucratic reality, a subject that should resonate with any audience it reaches. At the very least, it will gut those with a soul.

Less impactful yet still worthwhile are Anuja, I Am Not a Robot, and The Last Ranger. The three shorts cover a wide range of narrative subjects, yet are all about how significant choices can dictate our immediate futures. Produced by Mindy Kaling, Anuja may be the flashiest title of the lot in part due to its celebrity backing and its availability on Netflix. Yet, this tale of a nine-year-old sweatshop worker who gets the opportunity to go to school at the cost of her and her sister’s jobs is too light on its feet for its own good. Directed by Adam J. Graves, it’s the sort of short that feels unfortunately (if unintentionally) manipulative in its narrative, relying on our buy-in to the life-changing dilemma its titular character faces over substance.

The Last Ranger, directed by Cindy Lee, is similar in its focus on how the brave people of any country can shape its future with one act of courage. Its gorgeous cinematography is undoubtedly the highlight, and while a few of its events may churn stomachs, it’s also sure to inspire complex questions about wildlife conservation in a kill-happy world. Conversely, I Am Not a Robot faces a situation we can all find umbrage in: Those damned CAPTCHA tests that help prove our authenticity as humans to electronic overlords. In this particular tale, though, Ellen Parren’s Dutch music producer is told that she is, more than likely, a cyborg, a disturbing fate that she struggles with, understandably so. It’s the funniest nominee across the board, though its conclusion will have you rethinking which motorcycles you click on the next time you’re prompted with that inane, inevitable grid. Even if it stands no chance of winning here, it’s the sort of short you can see inspiring a feature down the line. 

Prediction: The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent

The 20th annual Oscar Nominated Short Films theatrical release, presented by SHORTS, is currently playing in cinemas. For tickets, please visit www.shorts.tv/theoscarshorts/.