The nominees for the Oscar’s are out and I am always intrigued by the short film categories. There are two categories – short film (live) and short film (animated). I often wonder if the directors operated a home business or actually have a office, staff and studio space. The shortest film this year runs three minutes and the longest runs thirty minutes. The limit is forty minutes.

The nominees this year for live short film are:

Manon on the Asphalt, from France. Directed by Elizabeth Marre and Olivier Pont, in which a young woman, laying in the street after a car has hit her while riding her bike, wonders how her mother and her friends would react to her death.
New Boy, from Ireland. Directed by Steph Green, in which a nine-year-old African immigrant struggles with a bully in his first day at his new school.

On the Line, from Switzerland and Germany. Directed by Reto Caffi, which finds a security guard at a store unexpectedly coming closer to the object of his desire, a bookstore clerk at his work, whom he watches over the surveillance cameras every day.

The Pig, from Denmark. Directed by Dorte Høgh, featuring a collision of cultures between a Danish man who has become unexpected attached to a painting of a pig in his hospital room and the Muslim family of the man who shares the hospital room.

Toyland, from Germany. Directed by Jochen Alexander Freydank, in which a mother in Nazi Germany desperately searches for her young son, whom has run away from home to join their Jewish neighbors on their trip to Toyland.

The nominees this year for animated short film are:

The House of Small Cubes, from Japan and France. Directed by Kunio Kato, which tells the story of a man who must continually build new stories to his home in order to live out the rising tides that surround him.
Lavatory Lovestory, from Russia. Directed by Konstantin Bronzit, in which a female attendant in a men’s room unexpectedly finds love.

Oktapodi, from France. Directed by Julien Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi, which finds two octopi in love trying to outwit a restaurant delivery boy.

Presto, from the United States. Directed by Doug Sweetland, in which a magician is continually foiled by his hungry bunny sidekick.

This Way Up, from the United Kingdom. Directed by Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith, which finds two morticians struggling to get a coffin to its final resting place.