2014 Oscar Nominated Shorts - Live Action

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The Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts feature a few familiar faces and voices in the casts and very real and accessible emotions in their stories. Boogaloo And Graham is a sweet story of two young brothers in Northern Ireland during the Troubles whose devotion to their pet chickens causes havoc. The Phone Call consists of a long, agonized conversation between a crisis-hotline counselor (Sally Hawkins) and a suicidal caller (Jim Broadbent). Aya, from Israel, is an interesting, smoothly shot entry in the two-strangers-talking-in-a-car genre.

The two standouts are Butter Lamp, a deceptively simple film in which a Tibetan photographer interacts with his clients in front of a series of picturesque backdrops, and Parvaneh, which follows a young Afghan refugee through a difficult day and night in Zurich. Both films convey a sense that human beings are endlessly mysterious, and that cinema has only just begun to explore their mysteries.

– A.O. Scott, The New York Times