Jan. 29--What happened to that Oscars diversity problem? Poof. Gone. Judging from the five nominated short films in the live-action category, the motion picture academy's problems of blinkered, whitey-white Oscars selection could be solved if the voters (and nominators before them) simply looked around the world, instead of sticking mainly to mainstream American pictures that make money.
For all its obvious restrictions, short-form narrative filmmaking often bites off more than the average feature-length picture can chew. "Day One," Henry Hughes' 25-minute gut-wrencher, packs a tremendous amount in its day-in-the-life of an Afghan-American interpreter (Layla Alizada, excellent) working with U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
The script makes some rookie mistakes, setting up a convenient dramatic parallel between the interpreter and a local village woman about to give birth. But it's pretty gripping all the same. So is "Shok," a coproduction of Kosovo and the United Kingdom. This is the first Kosovo Oscar nominee. It's a strong telling of a friendship between two Albanian boys (Lum Veseli and Andi Bajgora), and their encounters with Serbian troops during the Kosovo war. British director Jamie Donoughue brings almost too much polish to the production, but as a "Bicycle Thieves" for a new era, "Shok" holds the screen.
All five shorts do, in fact. From England, "Stutterer" stars Matthew Needham as a severe stutterer in an online friendship-maybe-more with a young woman about to visit London. The prospect of their first actual meeting is fraught. The tone here is deft, gently comic. The same goes for the clever, facile West Bank sitcom-ette "Ave Maria," in which an Israeli's literal run-in with a convent's Virgin Mary statue leads to a lesson in interfaith and geopolitical struggle. This is followed by a peaceable solution. It's a fairy tale, in other words.
Of all the shorts, the German custody drama "Everything Will Be Okay" may be the best. A desperate divorced father (Simon Schwarz) whisks his preteen daughter (Julia Pointner) away on one of their regularly scheduled weekends together. The unscheduled part involves getting passports and plane tickets. The performances are terrific, and the viewer's sympathies are shrewdly complicated by the father's warring impulses among love, panic and the ever-present, wide-eyed reminder of the risks he's taking.
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
mjphillips@tribpub.com
Oscar Nominated Short Films 2016: Live Action -- 3.5 stars
No MPAA rating.
Running time: 1:47
Opens: Friday at Landmark Century Centre, 2828 N. Clark St., www.landmarktheatres.com/chicago
