With just three Oscar-winning films left to review for this blog, I will take a short break to review the five nominees for this year’s Documentary Shorts award. On Sunday, a couple friends and I took in the mini-marathon of movies at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, sitting through about 3.5 hours of documentary footage. Historically, documentaries are not my idea of a fun time, but since these were literally shorter, I thought perhaps I’d be able to sit through them. And I was right—at no more than 40 minutes in length, these were just right for me!
As a side note, I really question where people would see shorts like this normally. I imagine there were hundreds of other documentary shorts produced that didn’t get nominated; where do people possibly see these? Some money had to go into their production; just sending them to the Academy seems like a waste. If anyone knows, I’d be curious to find out!
Four of the five nominees were very dark; actually all five centered largely around death. From terrorism to pollution to global warming to war, it wasn’t the most fun subject matter throughout.
Now, to rank the five nominees.
1. Sun Come Up
This was my favorite, but I put its chance of winning around 1%. The inhabitants of the Carteret Islands must leave after thousands of years of settlement; global warming is causing the ocean to engulf their tiny island, and they must travel to the mainland, pleading with the locals to donate some land for their families to live on. All the while I was really rooting for the poor Carteret people, who seemed like such a peaceful, likable bunch. In the end, they find villagers willing to donate land and the Carterets will eventually be saved. One line in the short really struck me as funny: “You, chew betelnut!”
2. The Warriors of Quigang
In a small village in China, a major chemical plant has moved into town and is polluting the air and water, which is causing poor villagers great illness and death. The villagers team up and one man named Zhang takes the lead and collects signatures to take to the higher government, fighting for the chemical plant to leave town. This short surprisingly got a few chuckles from the audience here and there, mostly from one of the Chinese townswomen gossipers. Again, it is great victory for the little guys. A feel-goodish sort of film despite a ton of unnecessary deaths.
3. Poster Girl
The only one of the shorts that was truly about an American, Poster Girl tells the story of Robynn Murray, a girl who without much consideration signed up for the army and was forced to become a lead machine-gunner. Now she’s home and her life is a living hell as she tries to get over what she did to innocent civilians. This one was very powerful with a lot of raw emotion from this young woman, but the short takes an unexpected twist when she manages to regain control of her life by participating in an art program where she uses her Army uniform in artwork. I was really liking this one until they started focusing on the art, which was much less interesting.
4. Killing in the Name
The first short was a devastating look at the aftermath of Ashraf Al-Khaled’s wedding day where a suicide bomber killed 27 people, including three of the four parents of the couple. Ashraf vows to speak the truth to the world about terrorism and sees if he can change the minds of the youth who are being trained to one day do the work of the jihad. Al-Khaled means very well, but I’m not so sure his message ever gets through to anyone. The school kids he spoke to basically laughed at him. That’s where this one falls a little short for me; unlike the first three, Ashref has yet to actually win his battle.
5. Strangers No More
The last of the five is surprisingly the only one with any lighthearted subject matter at all, as we are taken to a school in Tel Aviv where kids from 48 different countries come together to learn. The short follows the path of several kids who came to the school after overcoming hardships in their home lands, and how the amazing teachers help them to feel part of a family. It was impressive how quickly these kids were able to learn various languages and then become translators for other new students. The short got a few laughs from the crowd with some “kids say the darnedest things” type of lines, but wasn’t terribly memorable in my opinion. It also loses a point for overuse of the Papyrus font.
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