I am going through the live action shorts that got Oscar nominations (last) this year, and my only note so far is that these films need to have some humour so I don’t, well, you know. Okay, maybe I’m not giving these shorts enough credit for levity they may bring to us, their lovely viewers. The only short I saw before the Academy announced their nominations is I’m Not a Robot. Someone wrote that Victoria Warmerdam’s short is funny and, as much as it’s, where? Perhaps there is some humour in how other characters know something that the protagonist does not. Seeing this as part of this year’s Shorts Not Pants reminded me of Ellen Parren. Parren is great a showing Lara’s reactions with subtlety.

Now, let’s get into the misery, which is fine because I’m naturally miserable, as the next short is A Lien, from directors David and Sam Cutler-Kreusz. It shows Oscar (William Martinez) and Sophia Gomez (Victoria Ratermanis). They enter the New York Immigration building so Oscar can apply to become a citizen. But what they don’t know is that Immigration colludes with ICE to deport applicants. A stressful film, it’s good at depicting the building from where Oscar is trying to escape. A short film about ICE is triggering enough that whatever follows it can’t be ‘bad’.

But I’ll be generous here and say that Cindy Lee’s The Last Ranger isn’t trying too hard to tug at our heartstrings. Here, a child, Litha (Liyabona Mroqoza) finds herself in the middle of South Africa’s dangerous and very lethal industry of rhino horn poaching. I do have to dock points for the opening scenes that needed some better lighting. The sound design also started on the low end here and needed to be louder. The bad dawn lighting, thankfully, makes way for better natural lighting for most of this. It’s also trying things visually without making it seen like it’s doing too many things. The longest of the shorts, it also has enough breathing room between the tenser moments. The weakest of the shorts but it still has high enough marks in my opinion.

The next Oscar short is Nebojša Slijepčević‘ The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent, where strangers in 1990s Yugoslavia have a stopover during what they thought is a routine ride. During that stop, passengers like Dragan (Goran Bodgan) must answer questions to test their faith. Specifically, one of those questions pertains to each passenger’s family’s patron saint, which is wild. As a Catholic I don’t even know my patron saint, so I fail this test. The scene in that short speaks to a higher level of xenophobia under Christian guises. I hope to never see this xenophobia, and the specificity here makes this my favourite, The titular character here also has the perfect response to such a stupid ass question.

Eight hundred rupees seems little to us in the west – it’s about $13 in Canadian money, but for the titular character in Adam J. Graves’ Anuja (Sajda Pathan), it’s a lot. It’s enough for her and sister to feel like heaven, to go to the movies. It’s also double the money to take a test that may get her a scholarship, but does she want to go, or to stay in a sweatshop with her sister? This short is a simple one that still touches on quite a depressing subject. But seeing joy in these characters feel like a balm in a programme with important films.

Toronto cinephiles can watch this year’s Oscar shorts at TIFF.