Review: We watched all 15 short films nominated at the 2025 Oscars. Here's what should win

If you privation to ace your Oscar pool, you musn’t disregard the 3 abbreviated movie categories — animation, live-action and documentary. But what cinephile would, anyway? The 15 nominees present person already won something, if you deliberation of them arsenic planetary ambassadors of each that cinema tin bash successful a pinch of time. They volition vie connected Hollywood’s biggest nighttime but, of course, we person our favorites.

This year’s coagulated animation clump splits neatly, betwixt flummoxed kids with anticipation and injured adults trying to cope. Among the former, Loïc Espuche’s French charmer “Yuck!” depicts consensual kissing arsenic a pink, sparkly archer connected people’s lips, which creates an inconvenient occupation for immoderate kid disgusted by adults smooching but secretly funny successful trying it. Veteran Japanese animator Daisuke Nishio’s stop-motion fantasy “Magic Candies” gives lonely lad Dong-Dong a container of the rubric sweets, each concisely making a portion of his satellite little silent, arsenic his ain outlook becomes much appreciative and confident. Enough optimistic voters could onshore either of these films the statuette.

Kissing makes lips glow pinkish successful the animated abbreviated “Yuck!”

(Shorts)

But thing tells maine our battered temper volition spot a victor successful thing similar talented ironist Nicolas Keppens’ “Beautiful Men,” a quirky communicative of 3 balding Flemish brothers visiting foggy Istanbul for hairsbreadth transplants. It makes superb usage of the tactile intimacy of stop-motion, possibly the lone due benignant considering this trio’s crippling insecurities. Another anticipation is “In the Shadow of the Cypress” from co-directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani, who travel past year’s archetypal quality successful this class by an Iranian filmmaker (Yegane Moghaddam with “Our Uniform”). Their color-coded communicative of a traumatized warfare veteran, his acrophobic girl and a beached whale is evocative and unsentimental.

An isolating unease and satiric TV nostalgia people Dutch filmmaker Nina Gantz’s Roald Dahl-meets-Adult Swim curio “Wander to Wonder,” astir the tiny quality stars of a inexpensive children’s show, fumbling done endurance successful their disused workplace aft the demise of their creator. In its bleakly comic premix of world-building by mode of world-decaying, it memorably reclaims the word “suspended animation,” and is resonant capable to win.

The live-action entries, meanwhile, look astatine unsafe situations — immoderate ripped from existent life. South African Cindy Lee’s semimelodramatic but effectual poaching parable “The Last Ranger” sends a wide-eyed colony miss with a emotion of rhinos into a wildlife preserve, wherever her brushwood with a affable pistillate ranger leads to a convulsive revelation astir extortion and endangerment. From India (and American shaper Mindy Kaling) comes philosopher-turned-filmmaker Adam J. Graves’ refreshing “Anuja.” It tracks the spirited enslaved betwixt the rubric character, a 9-year-old, and her older sister Palak, astute girls navigating the strained opportunities disposable to them. Fleet and amusing, live to childhood’s exploratory nature, it besides regrettably cedes melodramatic crushed astatine a funny point.

The live-action Oscar nominee “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” is based connected a existent story.

(Shorts)

Weightiness isn’t a occupation for either “A Lien,” from writer-directors Sam and David Cutler-Kreutz, oregon Dutchwoman Victoria Warmerdam’s “I’m Not a Robot.” The erstwhile brings crackling Paul Greengrass-like vigor to a young family’s engagement with America’s bait-and-switch migration system. The second — arsenic if Maren Ade had made a “Black Mirror” occurrence — takes Captcha exertion to an eerie omega constituent for a young bureau idiosyncratic (superbly played by Ellen Parren). It’s a feminist nightmare for her quality — and a darkly tingling individuality drama for us.

The standout, though, and probable winner, is Nebojša Slijepčević’s masterfully tense Bosnian warfare vignette “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent,” acceptable successful the grim complacency of a bid compartment. As the abstraction is searched by a paramilitary group, a young Muslim man’s destiny is bystander fodder for each but 1 passenger. Though a existent story, the stripping distant of historically circumstantial details is portion of the film’s power: It feels disturbingly relevant.

Over successful the abbreviated documentaries, films tackle legacies of unit or, successful the lawsuit of “Instruments of a Beating Heart” and “The Only Girl successful the Orchestra,” the sweeter strains fostered by music. The delightful “Instruments,” from Ema Ryan Yamazaki, takes america wrong a Tokyo schoolhouse wherever 2nd graders signifier a percussive orchestra, learning astir blending their tense interior rhythms into the worldly of communal performance.

An representation from the abbreviated documentary “Incident,” directed by Bill Morrison.

(Shorts)

“The Only Girl,” meanwhile, is Molly O’Brien’s loving representation of her groundbreaking aunt, 89-year-old treble bassist Orin O’Brien, the New York Philharmonic’s archetypal pistillate orchestra member, handpicked by Leonard Bernstein himself. She’s self-effacing, charismatically nerdy and loved by colleagues and students. It’s a superlative biodoc fueled by however effortlessly O’Brien radiates the soulful bonhomie we privation to ideate courses done each those dedicated to a beingness successful art.

Grace exists successful the much terrible stories too. Kim A. Snyder’s “Death by Numbers” centers connected the expressive healing process of Sam Fuentes, a Parkland, Fla., school-shooting survivor, arsenic her assailant’s proceedings nears. Texas’ Death Row is wherever Smriti Mundhra’s heavy, heartfelt “I Am Ready, Warden” finds uncommon crushed shared by a condemned murderer, a reform-minded section DA and the lad of the victim, torn by unresolved feelings. It potently argues that, successful immoderate cases, the decease punishment lone kills affirmative change.

But the astir deserving short, “Incident,” by never-before-nominated found-footage maestro Bill Morrison (“Dawson City: Frozen Time”), reveals the limits of accountability. The movie is simply a real-time montage from publically released constabulary body-cam and surveillance videos of a Chicago officer’s fatal shooting of a Black pedestrian and the chaotic aftermath. From synched split-screen images, we sorb the excruciating minutes that barber Harith Augustus’ assemblage lies unattended, portion becoming privy to the closed-ranks crafting of a justification. On the different broadside of the yellowish constabulary tape, a gathering chorus of a besieged assemblage shouts the information similar a commentary way they cognize volition ne'er beryllium heard.

Chicago’s latest constabulary national declaration revoked the nationalist usage of their body-cam footage. “Incident” infuriatingly uncovers why.