Awards on our Mind 🧠

📅 This Week on Short of the Week

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Georgina led off this week’s coverage by highlighting this New York-set drama from writer/director Anthony Nicolau, previously featured as a producer on This is Our Home. The short presents a classic ethical dilemma, and she was smitten, asserting that her, “feelings towards this short transcend mere liking; I found myself completely captivated and truly in love with it.”

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Then, Céline journeys down to New Orleans for this documentary on a joyous subculture. Guided by the marvelous Barber Bo Dollis, director Alexandra Kern and we the audience are introduced to some of the characters, issues, and values of this colorful community.

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Finally, today’s short is a wild, WILD one from Austria, courtesy of Travelling Distribution. From rising talent Rosa Friedrich, the film is a raucous party, but also a very finely modulated piece of ensemble storytelling as the film introduces numerous characters that you feel you instantly know: the pregnant and hearing-impaired protagonist, her drunk mother, the lothario groom, the blissfully ignorant bride, and interweaves their stories amidst the chaos. Both funny and touching yet with no shortage of messy drama, Céline remarks that “…as the film concludes you’re left with the lingering feeling that you’d rather stick around to see how they’ll all deal with the aftermath of the party.”

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I don’t want to spoil anything, but the Short of the Week Sr. Programmers are starting to think about our awards, and this was a film that came up a couple of times…

So, with our second YouTube release of the week, we reached back for this release from July which has yet to leave our team’s minds. Hailing from China, it is an exquisite psychological thriller about an athlete past his prime and the seed of jealousy planted by the arrival of a new, younger teammate.

🗳️Oscar Voter’s Guide

With voting now underway within the Academy, Rob, Céline, and I each took a category and binged the 15 shorts on its shortlist to make our official recommendations.

Whether you’re a voter, an Oscar-obsessive, or just a shorts fan (several of our picks are available to watch) check out our thoughts on these top contenders. I’ll confess that while Rob and Céline both found joy in Animation and Documentary respectively, I found myself cranky with the Live-Action selections and had to go on a rant to clear my chest…

🎭 BAFTA Longlists

They’re not the Oscars, but, with a strong UK contingent on our team, it’s only fitting we recognize the UK’s signature awards event too, which announced its longlists recently. I quite like “longlists” as a term btw, as it prevents me from typing nonsense like “the shorts Shortlists” which makes me sound dumb.

Anyway, here are the 15 films in contention across the two short film categories. There is a bit of overlap with Oscar (Wild Summon, The One-Note Man) a smattering of S/W alums (Anthony Ing, Jenny Jokela, Stephen Irwin), and one recent S/W feature (A Festival of Slaps). We think it is a mighty fine list. Well done old chaps!

🧶 Odds n’ Ends

• We’ve got dates this weekend with some Mean Girls! Short of the Week alums Arturo Perez Jr. and Samantha Jayne were tabbed by Tina Fey to direct this reboot of the 2004 classic, so we’ve got high hopes for it. We first fell for the duo with 2017’s Dan Miller (a short I still love to return to from time to time) and greatly enjoyed Quarter Life Poetry, a series we spotlighted in our 2019 piece on the FXX short-form anthology show, Cake. Congrats to Arturo and Samantha!

• Speaking of alums, Sundance Screenwriter Fellows Were Announced and several of our featured filmmakers will be partaking. Sundance itself is around the corner (more from us on that next week) and several of these fellows will return to Park City with their feature in future years like S/W alum Sean Wang is doing this year with his eagerly anticipated feature debut Dìdi (弟弟). Congrats to:

  • Himesh Patel & Nikesh Shukla (Two Dosas)

  • Jane Casey Modderno (Disgrace & Pet Rituals)

  • Courtney Loo (Post Office)

• Their experience at the Sundance Institute will be part of the continuing legacy of Michelle Satter, who founded the Director and Screenwriter labs and who was presented with an Honorary Oscar at the Governor’s Awards this week. It’s hard to come up with someone more influential in the nurturance of short film talent than Satter and we saw tons of tributes on social media from filmmakers who had moved from shorts to features under her guidance. Watch her acceptance below. Richly deserved!

• More 👏🏽 are in order, this time for Elizabeth Lo and Dan Chen who were announced as fellows for the 2nd Documentary Development Initiative Cohort, a program run by The Gotham Film and Media Institute and HBO Documentary Films, which includes a $50,000 grant.

• In more grant news, Netflix and NEWFEST have opened applications for their annual New Voices Filmmaker Grant. Open to LGBTQ+ directors, the opportunity comes with $25,000 in addition to other perks.

• Finally, do you have beef with film festivals? The Short Film Conference, which we highlighted a few weeks ago, is running an anonymous survey asking filmmakers to share their honest feedback with festivals. The results and highlights will be shared with festival representatives during a session at the conference which takes place at Clermont-Ferrand in February. Make your voice heard!