Let's start by saying we write this from a place of admiration. There are some great cinematic experiences to be had wading through 2020's Best Picture nominees: The Irishman, Joker, 1917, Little Women, Parasite. You know the ones. But watching them will also take up a full 21 hours and 15 minutes of your life (21 hours and 35 minutes if you watch the Once Upon a Time in Hollywood extended digital cut). Further down the pecking order – OK, a lot further down – there are some other films that also promise a mind-blowing viewing experience, albeit in a more low-key (and shorter!) way.
There are five films nominated in the "documentary (short film)" category – winner to be announced at the Oscars ceremony this Sunday – three of which are easily viewable, and two of which you can track down if you're a completist keeno. With running times of between 20 and 40 minutes you could also watch them all in the time it takes to enjoy OUATIH (the non-digital cut!), and while we are more than happy to watch Margot Robbie driving around Los Angeles in lovely cars for as long as she'll let us, there is arguably a lot more to be learned/stunned/shocked by in these little films. And definitely no Hollywood happy endings.
First up is In The Absence, directed Yi-Seung Jun (trailer here, or just go ahead and watch the whole film), which looks at the 2014 Sewol Ferry disaster in South Korea in which 299 people died, many of them students. The shocking nature of the incident lay in the gross ineptitude of the recovery operation, in which large numbers of passengers were told to stay inside the ship – it's impossible not to think about Grenfell – even as it was sinking (the captain, meanwhile, climbed onto a rescue boat). The film has devastatingly simple structure: playing recordings of the phone calls made between various authorities, including the offices of President Park Geun-Hye, which were agonisingly slow, or perhaps even reluctant, to recognise the seriousness of the situation or do anything about it, over footage of the slowing sinking ship. This, juxtaposed with interviews with bereaved parents and rescue workers – and later, their eerie underwater footage of rows of sneakers and suitcases – makes for deeply harrowing and important viewing.
Learning to Skateboard in a Warzone (if You're a Girl), from director Carol Dysinger, has a sunnier premise, although the backdrop is equally bleak. As the trailer shows (the film is viewable on A+E Networks), it follows an academic year at Skateistan in Kabul, Afghanistan, where the young female students are taught to skateboard, and also, perhaps more to the point, though less filmable, to read and write. The girls' progress is a delight to witness, even as explosions happen around them (the truck bomb that killed more than 150 people near the German embassy in 2017 occurred during filming). And let's not forget that this is a society which, though no longer under Taliban rule, still has families who abide by draconian codes: in one heartbreaking sequence, 12-year-old pupil Reihana mentions that her older sisters, one of whom is 13, are no longer allowed to leave the house. Her freedom is nearly gone. "I don't want to grow up so I can skate forever," she says.
There are times, watching John Haptas and Kristine Samuelson's Life Overtakes Me (trailer here, complete film viewable on Netflix) when you have to stop and catch a breath. The subject is staggeringly sad, following families who are experiencing a phenomenon known as Resignation Syndrome, a relatively recently identified illness that seems to occur in immigrant children, particularly those who have escaped unspeakable hardships but whose status in their new country – in the case of the film, Sweden – is not yet secure. Their need to escape their reality is so severe that the children shut down: they stop speaking, then they stop eating and drinking, then they fall into a coma-like state, completely unresponsive to the outside world. For families that have already endured so much – the three families followed have experienced rape, torture and murder attempts – it is an unbelievably cruel coda. But, astonishingly, it seems to have a straightforward, bureaucratic cure that brings immigration policies squarely into the frame.
Walk, Dance, Cha-Cha, from director Laura Nix, is in some ways the slightest of the five films (it's also the shortest), but that's not to say it doesn't have a point (trailer here, watch the whole film here). It follows Paul and Millie Cao, two Vietnamese immigrants in Los Angeles who are now dedicated Latin dance enthusiasts (Nix encountered the couple when she herself was taking classes at the Lai Lai Ballroom in the San Gabriel Valley). It's a love story, essentially, both the Caos' love of dance, and also their love for each other, which has endured its hardships – the couple dated for six months in the late Seventies, then were separated for six years as they both made their escapes from Vietnam's Communist regime. Nix's film is a meditative, gentle sequel to portrayals of "typical" immigrant struggle: in America they've worked hard, made a life for themselves, raised a child; now, in their later years, the Caos can play, as the film's touching final dance sequence reveals. As Paul says, "We're making up for the lost time."
Last up is St Louis Superman by Smriti Mundhra and Sami Khan, which profiles Bruce Franks Jr, a then-34-year-old battle rapper from St Louis, Missouri, who became a prominent civil rights activist and later, a state representative (the film has been screening but is not available online at the time of writing, but the trailer is here). Franks, with his tear-drop face tattoos, is an inspiring character, moved to act by the gun violence and police brutality that he has witnessed in his community – notably the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which happened the day Franks' son, King, was born – but also by a very personal tragedy that continues to be a heavy burden (Franks resigned in 2019 after three years in office, saying he needed to work on his mental health).
Which will win on Sunday? Tough to say, though Life Overtakes Me is definitely the film that has shaken us the most. Yes these are almost all tough watches – like we say, there's definitely no Brad and Leo shooting the shit – but for sobering lessons about the way the modern world works (or doesn't), these five uneasy pieces pack a significant punch.
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Miranda Collinge is the Deputy Editor of Esquire, overseeing editorial commissioning for the brand. With a background in arts and entertainment journalism, she also writes widely herself, on topics ranging from Instagram fish to psychedelic supper clubs, and has written numerous cover profiles for the magazine including Cillian Murphy, Rami Malek and Tom Hardy.
