Review: Oscar-nominated documentary shorts deliver half-hour looks at big issues — and one beautifully strange walk around an observatory
Four of the five nominees for the 98th Academy Awards in the documentary short categories are more than 30 minutes long and take oblique looks at some of the thorniest issues of our time — school shootings, abortion rights, the wars in Ukraine and Gaza — that engage brains and hearts to devastating effect.
The program, curated by filmmaker Taika Waititi, starts with the oddball in the group, director Alison McAlpine’s “Perfectly a Strangeness.” On the surface, there doesn’t seem to be a lot here, just three donkeys walking around an astronomical observatory in a desert in Chile. But McAlpine’s stirring cinematography and observant eye make us stop to really consider the intersection between stubborn nature and cosmic technology.
The other four I’ll list from simply good to really great:
• “Armed With Only a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud” is a labor of love by two of Brent’s filmmaking collaborators — his brother Craig and their producer friend Juan Arredondo — to capture the work of the first American journalist killed in the war in Ukraine. The movie captures Brent Renaud’s determination to dive into conflict zones, from Iraq to Somalia to Afghanistan, and tell the stories of the people on the ground who were affected by decisions made elsewhere. If there’s a weakness here, it’s that Brent seldom pointed the camera at himself, so we only get by inference what he was feeling and thinking when he courted danger. The bond between brothers is evident, including in the credits, where Craig shares directing credit with his late brother.
• “Children No More: ‘Were and Are Gone’” follows a silent protest movement in Israel, where volunteers line up holding posters depicting children who have been killed by Israeli military operations in Gaza. Director Hilla Medalia interviews some organizers, who insist their efforts are nonviolent and anti-violence, not anti-Israel — then shows the vitriolic responses the events get from other Israelis. Like so many aspects of the divide between Israelis and Palestinians, the emotions the movie evokes are, well, complicated.
• “The Devil Is Busy” goes inside a different battle zone: A women’s health clinic in Atlanta, where women who need reproductive care must deal with Bible-quoting protesters outside and the possibility inside that they’ve gone past Georgia’s restrictive ban on abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Directors Geeta Gandbhir (who’s nominated in the documentary feature category for “The Perfect Neighbor”) and Christalyn Hampton focus on the clinic’s weary but determined staff members, notably the chief of security, who’s the first one in and last one out every day. It’s a concise and heart-breaking chronicle of women facing hard choices because of someone else’s holy war.
• “All the Empty Rooms” is the toughest watch of the bunch, and ultimately the most rewarding. Director Joshua Seftel profiles Steve Hartman, a CBS News correspondent, and photographer Lou Bopp, who have taken on a challenging personal project: They meet families who have lost children in school shootings, and create profiles of those children by taking exhaustive photos of those children’s preserved bedrooms. The project, and Seftel’s chronicling of it, are reminders of the real young people and the lives they lived — and the lives they might have lived if they had the chance to become grown-ups.
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Oscar-nominated documentary short films
★★★1/2
Opens Friday, March 6, at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City). “All the Empty Rooms” is rated PG-13 for brief strong language and thematic material; “Armed With Only a Camera” is rated TV-MA; “The Devil Is Busy” is rated TV-14; “Children No More” is unrated, but probably PG-13 for language; “Perfectly a Strangeness” is not rated, but probably G. Running time: 157 minutes in total; one film is in Hebrew, the other partly in Ukrainian and other languages, both with subtitles.