Oscar Shorts 2024 Review and interview with ShortsTV CEO, Carter Pilcher

Those that know or follow my work know that I am a major proponent of Short Films. The three oft-overlooked Academy Award categories - Best Animated Short, Best Live-Action Short and Best Documentary Short - often yield some of the very best stories, direction, imagination and yes, even performances, of the entire nominated field of film...long or short. This year is no different.

The Oscar-nominated Shorts come to theaters once again this weekend, and will play all the way up until Academy Award weekend on March 9th and 10th. Now is your chance to find out what you've been missing all those years...these three categories often signal a good time for a bathroom-break during the show, but once you get hooked by the Short film fever, you may never turn back.

As a guide, here are my takes on this years batch of nominees...let me preface this by saying there is not a "bad" or "dull" film in the bunch. ALL of these are worthy of having been nominated.

I then had the great honor to chat with CEO of ShortsTV, Carter Pilcher, whose company is responsible for the theatrical releases of these Oscar films each year.
Watch my interview with Carter Pincher at the very end of this article or click here.

Here then, are reactions in each category.

(This year's Animated Program is just under one hour, so two "highly recommended" Shorts are added to fill it out...the Live-Action and Documentary categories each run about 2-hours and 15 minutes).

(To find showtimes in your area for the Oscar Shorts, click here).

Animated Shorts

Overall Program Grade: B-

Not as solid overall as in years past, with one exception: My favorite entry this year is "Letter to a Pig," an emotional gut-punch that truly innovates in its blended-animation style. It contains some heavy messages about the Jewish experience and really left me in stunned silence. "Ninety-Five Senses" is also a solid entry, that plays with the viewers expectations and tells the story of an old man facing his last meal on Death Row. "Pachyderme" is fantastically rendered and deeply sad, as a girl remembers back to a traumatic and tragic event in her past. "Our Uniform" is neatly laid out as if clothing and textures themselves have come to life, and centers around an Iranian girl and her remembrances of the Hijab she wore. The weakest entry may be the most accessible, with "WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko." It's touching but a bit on the nose and doesn't quite pay off the way it thinks it does.

The animated category usually features more uplifting entries, but this year it's quite the downer. Not only that, but it just doesn't seem to pack the same punch as in previous years as a whole.

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Live-Action Shorts

Overall Program Grade: B+

For me, the stand-out Short among all of the categories this year, is the live-action "Knight of Fortune," about two men who meet at a morgue. It's a funny, surprising, and heart-warming entry from Denmark that is my pick for best of the bunch. Beyond this, there's "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," which is available now on Netflix along with another nominee in this category, "The After." Both are star-studded, the former being a film adapted from a Roald Dahl story by Wes Anderson and featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley and Ralph Fiennes. "The After" stars David Oyelowo as a grieving father who witnesses unthinkable brutality. The most controversial entry might be "Red, White and Blue," featuring Brittany Snow as a single-mother who travels across state lines for an abortion. The weakest entry is "Invincible," a well-acted drama from Canada that's inspired by the true story of Marc-Antoine Bernier.

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Documentary Shorts

Overall Program Grade: A


This is a strong year for the Documentary Short, and to juxtapose the other categories, there is a thread of optimism running through each nominee. I'm hard pressed to pick a favorite, as they are all that good. But if pressured, I'd have to go with "The Barber of Little Rock," a pointed story about the racial wealth gap in our country, and a small-business owner who refuses to accept his community's fate. "The Last Repair Shop" champions the arts, with a look at a Californian business that repairs musical instruments for local schools...the last of its kind in the US. "The ABCs of Book Banning" lets us see and hear from children as to their thoughts on why some well-known books aren't seeing the light of day in their libraries. "Island in Between" is not a story that most Americans will know, putting a spotlight on the small isle of Kenman, which acts as a go-between with Taiwan on one side and mainland China on the other. And if there is one film of them all that is sure to be crowned as a crowd-pleaser, it's "Nai Nai and Wai Po,' the story of two friends - one 82 and the other 93 - their spirit and their unending lust for living.

They're all great and they're all waiting for you to see them in the theaters...this is the ONLY opportunity you'll have to watch all of the short film nominees in theaters before the awards.

​(To find showtimes in your area for the Oscar Shorts, click here).

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