The 2024 Oscars will get Animated Shortly…
Once again, ShortsTV is bringing this year’s batch of Oscar nominated Live Action, Documentary, and Animated Short Films to a global audience. Check your local theater listings to see if and when the Showcases will be playing. Here’s our rundown of the Animation selections.
All five films are reviewed here by Erik Yates. Get an edge in your Oscar pool, and more importantly, be informed about some solid, if short, cinema that is being celebrated:
Letter to a Pig
TAL KANTOR / FRANCE / ISRAEL / 17 MINS
Letter to a Pig is a touching animated film chronicling an event that took place during the holocaust. Haim (Alexander Peleg and Indra Maharik) was a young boy running from the Nazis when he hid in a barn. While hidden, a pig looks him deep in the eye and then blocks Haim from the view of the Nazi soldiers who are searching the barn, effectively saving his life. Years later, as an old man, Haim is speaking to a class of young students about this event. He has written a letter to the pig who saved him as a way to convey his sentiment. The students who largely have never had such an experience are largely dismissive, except for Alma (Moriyah Meerson). As she internalizes Haim’s message, she has a dream where she must confront issues of identity, trauma, and the possibility that we are all capable of extreme cruelty. The animation is very unique in this film layering live action footage into the animation itself. This provides a form of realism in the midst of the animation. The historical relationship between Jews and their view of pigs lends itself powerfully to the themes of the film for Haim, but also feature prominently in Alma’s dream of how we view others and how that view can lend itself to great acts of violence or love.
Ninety-Five Senses
JARED HESS, JERUSHA HESS / USA / 13 mins
Ninety-Five Senses starts off with Coy (Tim Blake Nelson) spinning a yarn that this Texan could really appreciate given that it takes place here in the Lone Star State. Coy’s tale contains a few measures of embellishment as he weaves stories from his childhood in a humorous way. It’s when he is accused by his grandmother of being a thief for bringing home a reader’s digest from a waiting room, that his tale takes a dark and unexpected turn. All of his life’s experiences are told around the 5 senses we possess, and the possible nine-five senses we might be able to access beyond this lifetime. The animation is as warm and inviting as the laid-back colloquial cadence that Coy uses to share his life with us. After watching this film, Nelson is the perfect actor to voice Coy’s journey, encapsulating many emotions as he looks back on the life he has lived, enabling us, the audience, to feel his journey beyond just hearing his story.
Pachyderme
STEPHANIE CLEMENT / FRANCE / 11 MINS
Pachyderme is an innocent children’s tale on the surface of a young 9-year-old girl who goes to stay with her grandparents for 10 days. There is a giant horn of a beast on display in the hallway that scares her, the fishing trips with her grandfather, gardening with her grandfather, and a grandmother who helps her fall asleep when she is haunted by the “monster eyes” she sees in the wood ceiling above her at night. The symbolism and linguistic nuances by the narrator (Christa Theret) suggests something much more sinister is happening here and we realize that this is a child not remembering an innocent time with her grandparents, but a life-changing trauma, that like the giant beast in the hallway, needs to be slayed. The animation is mostly whimsical, occasionally revealing something diabolical lurking underneath. A powerful narrative for those who can put it all together.
War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John And Yoko
DAVE MULLINS / USA / 11 MINS
Leave it to a Beatle and his wife to create a song that inspires the most feel-good of this year’s Oscar Nominated Animation Short Films. The song of course is “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” and it serves as the grand finale on a war story, aptly named War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko, that takes place inside of World War I. On different sides of the trenches, two soldiers use a carrier pigeon to communicate their moves in a chess game they are playing while the war between their two sides rages on outside. Each has their own chess board and moves the other’s pieces when they receive the pigeon’s message. When they are dragged out of their respective tents and forced to charge out of the trenches for hand-to-hand combat, these two chess-playing soldiers are faced with the possibility of killing one another. The film’s animation is a more modern 21st-century form of the type of animation you might expect from the classic animation films and videos of The Beatles. The true hero of the film is of course the pigeon tasked with flying these chess moves through constant gunfire. The classic song, if one is familiar with its lyrics, telegraphs the ending of this tale a bit too much, but it still provides a feel-good moment for a 2024 world which is filled with war and might do well to heed John and Yoko’s plea for peace.
Our Uniform
YEGANE MOGHADDAM / IRAN / 7 MINS
Our Uniform uses the folds of a school uniform worn by a young girl in Tehran, Iran to animate her story of going to school and to explain what the ever-changing uniform she wears signifies as she ages. The film informs viewers before the opening scene that this story is not a criticism of wearing “hijab”, but for those who are able to understand the satire, and the good natured veneer covering the subterfuge layered beneath, it can be seen as a show of solidarity for the many women who put their lives on the line to protest this “uniform” in 2022-2023 following the death of Mahsa Amini. The film cleverly ends its narrative by remarking that when Iranian girls leave Iran to visit other parts of the world, they can wear whatever they want. For the young narrator, there is freedom when not wearing hijab while traveling, but even when wearing it, she claims that she is still free in her mind, even if the hijab seeks to conceal that freedom.