Oscar Shorts: Elephants, terror plots and visceral teenage emotions

Oscar nominated short film programs cover a range of topics and feelings.

Adam Graham
Detroit News Film Critic

A would-be domestic terrorist learns a lesson in compassion and humanity in "Stranger at the Gate," a powerful and profoundly moving documentary short that highlights the 2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films program, which starts Friday at a handful of area theaters.

The program, presented by Shorts TV, is typically the most popular annual booking at the Detroit Film Theatre. In addition to the DFT, the Oscar-nominated short films — which includes nominees in the Animated, Live Action and Documentary categories — is also playing Ann Arbor's Michigan Theater and Howell's Historic Howell Theater. Ann Arbor's Cinemark Ann Arbor 20 will be playing the Animated and Live Action entries.

A still from "Stranger at the Gate."

"Stranger at the Gate" tops a particularly strong class of documentary nominees. It tells the story of Mac McKinney, a Marine vet who returns home to Muncie, Indiana, with a grudge to bear and who plots to blow up a local Islamic center.

What happens next is wholly unexpected, and director Joshua Seftel talks to McKinney and finds a story of redemption and misplaced hatred, and the ways we don't have to be driven by our worst impulses as humans. It's a story that rings especially true every time we're rocked by another senseless tragedy, whether in a religious center, on a college campus or in any community space, which is to say it stands to be unfortunately relevant for a long time to come.

Director Kartiki Gonsalves' "The Elephant Whisperers," the odds-on favorite to pick up the Oscar statue on March 12, tells the heartwarming story of an elephant rehabilitation camp in South India and a couple's bond with Raghu, a baby elephant brought there in need of care. The 40-minute film, which is also streaming on Netflix, features astounding footage of elephants and their bond with humans, and shows how far some humans are willing to go to preserve their bond with Mother Nature's most captivating creatures.

A still from "The Elephant Whisperers."

"Haulout" also centers on animals, and one man who observes annual walrus patterns along the Arctic Ocean in the face of global warming. The Documentary program is rounded out by "How Do You a Measure a Year," a sweet story wherein director Jay Rosenblatt sits down with his daughter every year on her birthday and asks her the same series of questions, watching both how she changes and the answers vary over time, and "The Martha Mitchell Effect," the story of the wife of former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, who became a popular figure in politics and media during the politically tumultuous 1970s.

Animated Shorts

This year's class of Oscar-nominated animated shorts is led by "My Year of Dicks," the title of which caused its share of snickers when it was read by Riz Ahmed during the live Oscar nominations telecast.

The story, adapted from Pamela Ribon's memoir about trying to lose her virginity in the early 1990s, is awkward, painfully sincere and laugh out loud hilarious, and takes on a series of animation styles to express the racing, conflicted, scared, anxious feelings of a teenage girl.

A still from "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse"

"An Ostrich Told Me The World is Fake and I Think I Believe It" is writer-director Lachlan Pendragon's stop-motion short about the droning nature of office life, and one worker who starts to believe he's living in some sort of simulation.

"Ice Merchants," from Portuguese filmmaker João Gonzalez, is a lovely silent film about a father and son who live in a house on a cliff on the side of a mountain who parachute down to the town below to sell ice to the villagers, and "The Flying Sailor" is a surreal experiment, based on a true story that isn't revealed until the end credits.

The likely eventual Oscar winner from the pack is "The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse," a delicately animated production about the four title characters, who find each other in the wild and trade life lessons about kindness and humility. The film is also available to stream on Apple TV+.

Live Action Shorts

In "The Red Suitcase," a 16-year-old Iranian girl is to be married off by her father, but she evades her husband-to-be through a series of diversionary tactics in what becomes a fight for her freedom and her life.

A still from "The Red Suitcase."

Director Cyrus Neshvad's drama leads an international crop of Live Action Shorts nominees, which also includes "An Irish Goodbye," a touching comic tale of two brothers coping with their relationship after the death of their mother; "Ivalu," the story of one girl's search for her missing big sister in the expansive Greenland wilderness; "Nattrikken," or "Night Ride," about an accidental trolley theft and what happens afterward; and "Le Pupille," the mischievous, Disney-backed story of a group of girls at a Catholic boarding school in Italy and the cake they're eyeing on Christmas Eve. "Le Pupille," which is also streaming on Disney+, is favored to win the category by early Oscar oddsmakers.

agraham@detroitnews.com

@grahamorama

2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films

Running time: 95 minutes (Animated Shorts), 110 minutes (Live Action Shorts), 165 minutes (Documentary Shorts)

Not rated: some mature themes

In theaters