Documentary Short Finalists: A Closer Look at This Oscar Crop
Wednesday, October 22, 2014 at 10:51AM 
You can watch the Kehinde Wiley documentary here from PBSAs you may have heard, the finalist list for the Documentary Short Oscar has been announced. It is 8 films wide from which (presumably) 5 nominees will emerge though remember in the Aughts when it was usually 4 nominees which is so annoying. (Symmetry please, Oscar). Among those 8 films we have a few about illness (The Lions Mouth Opens, Joanna, Our Curse), one about the arts (Kehinde Wiley: An Economy of Grace) one environmental picture (White Earth) one picture Nathaniel will never be able to sit through because it's about slaughterhouses (The Reaper) which means he can't have a perfect Oscar record this year, and one about a natural disaster (One Child) which killed thousands but which focuses on three families.
The complete absence of World War II / Holocaust related docs will make your Oscar pool way harder this year. Sorry about it. Half the films are in English with Spanish, Chinese, and two from Poland filling the other half. You can read more about these films on the animation/documentary page which has been fully updated this morning with links to official sites and trailers.
For comparison's sake here are the trailers to Joanna and Our Curse. Get this: They're both about families dealing with incurable life-threatening illnesses, they're both from Poland, and they're both debut films from their directors Aneta Kopacz and Tomasz Sliwinski respectively
JOANNA by Aneta Kopacz - trailer for the short documentary (40') from Wajda Studio on Vimeo.
You can read more about the individual entries and where to watch the films or purchase them on the updated Animation & Documentary Oscar Chart
Reader Comments (2)
The Kehinde Wiley documentary gets my vote. Kehinde.
Nathaniel-Will Bryce Dallas Howard be eligible for a nomination for The Lions Mouth Opens as a producer?