HollyShorts 3. The 2020 Oscar-Qualifying Winners

by Nathaniel R

This is the first year The Film Experience has covered the HollyShorts Film Festival. We intended to do more but you know how it is with time. It flies! For the final piece, I thought I'd review a few of the winners. The Complete Winners List from the festival is presented in alphabetical order with capsule reviews of three Oscar qualifiers and a few more for good measure...

• Best Action: Twin Turbo by Caity Lotz
  Reviewed previously by Ben

o28

Best Animation (Oscar-Qualifying Category): o28 from Otalia Caussé, Geoffroy Collin, Lousie Grardel, Antoine Marchand, Robin Merle, and Fabian Meyran
Can't say that I'm a big fan of this slapstick short in which a tourist couple, an old woman, and a baby get stuck in a driverless street car that becomes a rollercoaster of sorts once it goes off the rails. To be fair there are a few good sight gags and nice through-line touches (flash photography, a Lisbon postcard, a rolling orange, and a projectile pacifier) but the annoying tourist characters are stock and the cumulative effect is more mildly amusing diversion than hilarious slapstick classic. C+

• Best Cinematography: Kai Dickson for Eyes of Eidolon

• Best Comedy: Basic by Chelsea Devantez
  Very short at three minutes with one basic joke -- social media makes people envious and crazy -- embedded in a woman's narrated journey through another woman's super-cliched instagram. Until... well, it's a short film and you know how they like to twist for the punchline. Fun! B

• Best Commercial: Lyon E-Sport by Gaetano Naccarato

• Best Director: Karishma Dube for BITTU

• Best Drama: November 1st by Charlie Manton

• Best Documentary: USA vs. Scott by Ora DeKornfeld and Isabel Castro

• Best Editing: Stella Heath Keir for End-O

• Best Female Short Screenplay: Hello I Must Be Going written by Sara Hallowell

• Best Horror: The Fourth Wall by Kelsey Bollig

• Best International: Alive by Jimmy Olsson

• Best LGBTQ+: Query By Sophie Kargman
  We're suckers for shorts like this that give you just a wee slice of someone's day with some provocative central question. This short is about best friends and roommates, one bi and one straight who have an on and off all day conversation about sexual norms and then decide to kiss to test their theory. There's even a completely random Armie Hammer cameo. A= 

Best Live Action (Oscar-Qualifying Category): Welcome Back by Tiffany Kontoyiannis
This short is of the tough tear-stained message variety. We follow a desperate mother and her confused daughter as they are deported back to Venezuela, where the mother is wanted by the oppressive government for organizing protests. An effective message picture. Bonus points for the brief tonal variety of the protagonists sister who practically stepped out of an Almodóvar picture. B

• Best Midnight Madness: Inferno by Bishal Dutta
  As Ben mentioned in his action short roundup some shorts feel more like audition pieces than films. Such is the case with this one which drops you into a pitch black hotel room without context as a sweaty desperate woman struggles to survive... what exactly? Lots of horror movie aesthetics and though it avoids crass jump scares it almost goes there often. As an audition reel showing the ability to create an atmosphere of dread and hysteria, it works. But there's zero in the way of context or even short film "twists" once it gets going, even in its last weirdly calm nightmare shot. Then again, horror is not my bag as I've often confessed. C+

• Best Music Video: Adventure by Monster Rally, directed by Zak Marx

• Best Producer: Julia Retali for Aio Zitelli
  Reviewed previously by Ben

• Best SAGIndie Award: Sunday’s Child by Maisie Richardson-Sellers

• Best Sci-Fi: Hekademia by Gloria Mercer

• Best Student: A Beautiful Nightmare by Kevin Lee Maxwell

• Best Television Pilot: Small Fry Pilot ‘Six Pack’ written by Madeline Mack, Michael Lincoln

• Best Thriller: An Uninvited Guest by Richard B. Pierre

• Best TV: The World Between Us by ChunYang Lin

 

• Best VFX: Automaton by Krzysztof Rost
  So abstract it's esssentially a VFX reel. Nevertheless I was mesmerized for its 4 minutes, never quite sure what I was looking at beyond the opening shot of a grass field and a thunderstorm morphing into something like an inferno and then underwater formations? explosions? Molecules? Erosion? What am I seeing? Slight of substance but weirdly hypnotic. B+

• Best Web Series: All-American Sex Offender by Chloe Lenihan

• Festival Honorable Mention: Nahjum by Sebastian Torres Greene & Manuel Del Valle

Grand Prix (Oscar-Qualifying Category): 1, 2, 3 All Eyes On Me by Emil Gallardo
Harrowing gun violence in our schools is a frequent nightmare-fuel filmmaking subject. But Gallardo's 15 minute short is a well-judged and strong addition to this tragic subgenre. It helps that the violence is off-screen, though the sound design still makes this a horror film. Farelle Walker anchors the short with a completely natural turn as a resourceful elementary school teacher struggling to save her entire class as she waits for help. Her classroom mantra transforms from playful calll and response to a scary lifeline jolt in this gripping short. (It's easy to see this one as a future Oscar finalist or nominee) A

• Indie Maverick Award: Justin Simien

• Screenplay 1st Place Grand Prize Winner: The Problem With Time Travel written by Mike Kearby

• Screenplay 2nd Place: Christopher and the Bug written by Vanessa Esteves

• Screenplay 3rd Place: Rice written by Omar Kamara

• Shot on Film Award presented by Kodak: Birthday Girl by Portia A. Buckley

• Shot on Film Honorable Mention presented by Kodak: David by Zach Woods

• Shot On Film Super 8 Winner presented by Kodak: "World Premiere Video" - The Music Video that survived after Music Television didn't by Mike J. Nichols
  A biographical doc short about a guy who fantasized about being on MTV as a teenager and discovered his lost video (with a cameo from MTV's own Dweezil Zappa) recording in the 80s recently while helping out another filmmaker on that recent Frank Zappa documentary feature. Cute and 80s nostalgia friendly, especially for MTV originalists (Oh, and this filmmaker is not that Mike Nichols obviously) B (B+ if you're over 40)

• Social Impact Award: Black Boys Can’t Cry by Victor Gabriel

• Special Jury Award: The Van by Erenik Beqiri

• Women in Film Award: The Birth of Valerie Venus by Sarah Clift

Comments

[Jesus Alonso]

I wonder if Pixar's "Out" is ellegible. It's the very best short (animated or not) I've seen in years.

[Ben]

I watched all the animated shorts, and I think o28 won mostly because the rest of the entries were so serious or abstract. There were some real weirdos in the group and o28 was light, bright and fun.

It wasn't my favorite (that was either Rag Doll or The Levers), but I understand why it won

[NATHANIEL R]

Jesus -- i'm not sure. Generally Pixar's shorts are eligible because they pair them with releases (and doing a theatrical release grants you eligibility so you dont have to win any festivals to qualify)... but in this case that didn't happen so who knows.