We’re still in the thick of awards season, and with all the big dogs fighting over the coveted Oscars for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Director and so forth, it’s easy to overlook three of the most interesting categories in the show: the shorts! The big thing these little delicious nuggets of filmmaking have working against them is that they don’t have anywhere near the theatrical (and subsequently, cultural) permeation of the juggernaut full-length features. Quite simply, not enough people see them.

Luckily, if you’re willing to seek these incredible shorts out (what self-respecting cinephile wouldn’t be?), ShortsHD and Magnolia Pictures will meet you halfway, as they’re rolling out the full lineup of the 2014 Oscar-nominated short films in theaters nationwide starting tomorrow, January 31st. There will be three programs of five nominees, with each program representing a different category (documentary, live-action, animated).

Short films force filmmakers to compress ideas down into a pure, crystalized form, a characteristic of the format that at its best yields potent, punchy bites cinema, and at its worst can lead to a shallow, insubstantial film that feels incomplete. Here’s what I thought of this year’s nominees:

Live Action Short Nominees

Helium

The Voorman Problem

Just Before Losing Everything

Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?

That Wasn’t Me

This category definitely has an odd man out, with the cloying sentimentality of Helium putting it far behind the rest of the pack. It’s about a dying child with a strong imagination being told bedside stories to comfort him, and the schmaltz level here is pretty numbing. Joining it on the lighter side of the category is concise Finnish comedy Do I Have to Take Care of Everything?, about a frazzled mom trying to get her family to a wedding they’re late for in a frenzy. It’s charming, clever, and very funny, and at a brisk 6 odd minutes, directors Selma Vilhunen and Kirsikka Saari are forced to put their visual storytelling muscles to the test. (They pass with flying colors.)

Things get just a hair more serious in Mark Gill and Baldwin Li’s The Voorman Problem, starring Bilbo Baggins himself, Martin Freeman, as a psychiatrist tasked with examining a patient who claims to be God and–impossibly–backs it up. It’s a fun, mischievous little bit of Twilight Zone eeriness that’s packed with wicked wit. From that alternate reality we go to the sobering, grounded That Wasn’t Me, Esteban Crespo’s short about a pair of Spanish doctors who get kidnapped and brutally abused by mercenaries in Africa. The bleak tone of this one feels overly fatalistic, and the slightly inflated dialog and acting don’t fit the visuals, which are firmly grounded in reality.

The best of the bunch is Xavier Legrand’s Just Before Losing Everything, a powder keg of a drama in which an abused wife has to sneak out (her children in tow) of the department store she works at so that they skip town without her stalking husband catching them. Legrand is able to generate as much, if not more high stakes and high tension than most full-length features of this type.

Category Predictions

Documentary Short Nominees

The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life

Karama Has No Walls

Facing Fear

Cave Digger

Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

The clear frontrunner here, as far as I’m concerned, is The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life, a touching short about Alice Herz Sommer, a 109-year-old pianist and Holocaust survivor. There are simply too many Oscar-magnet elements to it for the others to compete with. Plus, it’s a legitimately well crafted, moving piece. Prison Terminal is a similarly captivating personality portrait about the last days of Jack Hall as he receives hospice care while serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison. Designed to evoke empathy for the veteran (it succeeds), it abstains from examining the murder that got him incarcerated, which feels strange and could hurt its chances. Directed by Edgar Baren, the short will air on HBO on March 31 in addition to the theatrical program. Rounding out the portraitures is Jeffrey Karoff’s Cave Digger, which has a lighter, more emotionally shallow touch than the other two. Following New Mexico artist Ra Paulette, who by himself digs out beautiful, elaborate caves out of sandstone with the simplest tools for high-paying clients. The labors of Paulette’s masterpieces are intensive and fascinating, as are his relationships with his sometimes demanding clients.

Rounding out the category are two shorts with serious emotional heft. Like a companion piece to Jehane Noujaim’s Oscar-nominated feature-length doc The Square, Karama Has No Walls is about the tragic deaths of 53 peaceful protesters (some children) in Change Square in Sanaa, Yemen, who were inspired by the Egyptian’s protests Noujaim captured in her film. On the other side of the world, Los Angeles is the setting for Facing Fear, about a gay man who meets the neo-Nazi that tried to kill him 25 years prior–in a working environment. An objective examination of the nature of forgiveness, the short (by Jason Cohen) presents the subject matter quite objectively, which opens up the floodgates for heated discussions, but will likely hurt its chances of winning due to how cold-to-the-touch it is.

Category Predictions

Animated Short Nominees

Get a Horse!

Mr. Hublot

Feral

Possessions

Room on the Broom

What’s great about this category is that each entry has such a unique, inventive visual style that you get incredibly wrapped up in the bite-sized worlds the filmmakers have created (even if they don’t break new ground narratively). The artiest selection of the bunch is Feral, about a wild boy who’s found in the woods among wolves by a hunter and brought back to society to reintegrate. The expressionistic art style is tactile and organic, matching the wordless story well, though it’s a tale we’re all too familiar with. The second of the silent selections is Mr. Hublot, a tale about the strong bond between a man and his (robotic) dog that has a very stylish, steampunk-inspired aesthetic. It’s a feast for the eyes, but like Feral, comes up short in terms of narrative originality (though the story is nevertheless well executed).

Possessions, by Shuhei Morita, has the most stunning visual style of the five nominees, with rich Japanese illustrations that blur the lines between hand-drawn and CGI. The short was no doubt rendered with computers using a cel-shading technique, but if you freeze any frame you’d swear there were paints, pens, and paper involved. Furthermore, the story–about a man repairing armies of household items that have come to life–is more original than the rest. The Simon Pegg-narrated Room on the Broom, a children’s storybook-in-motion about a witch inviting a handful of animals, one by one, onto her increasingly crowded broom (much to the chagrin of her selfish pet cat), is pleasant, but comes up just short of enchanting. Disney’s entry into the foray is the imaginative Get a Horse!, which starts out as a Steamboat Willie-era Mickey Mouse cartoon, but ventures into meta-land when the characters rip through the projection screen and into the theater of a modern-day audience. The animators play with the gag from every angle, mixing the hand-drawn and CGI elements brilliantly.

Category Predictions

Oscar Nominated Short Films 2014 Trailer

Facing Fear, a short film by Bay Area resident Jason Cohen, just got nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Short. It explores the nature of forgiveness through the story of two men, Matthew Boger and Tim Zaal. One night when a 14-year-old Matthew, who came out at a young age, was roaming the streets of West Hollywood, he was jumped in an alley by a group of punk neo-Nazis and beaten nearly to death. He remembered one of the persecutors clearly. 26 years later, he and Tim (who had now left that terrible lifestyle behind) met again, and were faced with the impossible challenge of forgiving another (Matthew) and forgiving oneself (Tim). They began doing presentations across the country about the incident and how it affected their lives, and face the fear of forgiveness to this day.

Cohen invited me to the Saul Zaentz Media Center in Berkeley, California, where the film was produced (it was shot in LA). In a building where a slew of great films were worked on (One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, Amadeus, just to name a couple), I chatted with him about what’s so scary about forgiveness, giving a former neo-Nazi skinhead a fair shake, the advantages of the short film format, Matthew and Tim’s relationship today, representing the Bay Area at the Oscars, and more. Following my interview with him, I spoke with editor Tom Christopher about his experience with the film, which I’ve included below.

For more info, visit facingfearmovie.com

Talk about the relationship between fear and forgiveness.
Jason: We named the film Facing Fear, and when you hear what the film is about, the first, obvious notion is of the victim, Matthew, facing this fear of meeting his perpetrator, which was obviously part of it. But, for us, the rest of it was facing the fear of the process of forgiveness and everything involved in it. It can be scary, and it was scary for both of these people, the victim and the perpetrator, equally. When you hear stories of forgiveness, you’ll tend to sympathize with the victim and assume that they’re bearing the burden of this process of forgiving. We wanted to clearly show that Tim was facing plenty of demons and that the process was as difficult for him as it was for Matthew. Maybe even more difficult at times.

I feel that typically when people see someone like Tim, who’s done what he’s done, they think “monster”. It’s fascinating that half of the movie belongs to him.
Jason: When we started filming, they’d been back in each others’ lives for about six or seven years, so they had been on this journey and were in a good place. They’ll both admit that it’s something they still struggle with today, but for Tim, I feel like he’s struggling with it more. He has other things going on in his life that are still a direct result of his past life, and he’s got a lot of guilt. As he says in the film, there’s an inner struggle that he’s having, forgiving himself for that person he used to be. Matthew has personal issues, too, but Tim’s a really complex person.

I think you said it; when people [learn about] Tim, they think “monster”. But when you meet him, he’s a teddy bear. He’ll admit it. He loves to talk, and he’s very outgoing. You would never–aside from the fact that he’s 6’3 and bald–have any clue that he could have been leading a life like that before. It just wouldn’t cross your mind.

Was your intent from the beginning to focus on both Matthew and Tim’s perspectives equally?
Jason: The intent was that we wanted to show that the process of forgiveness is a two-way street. We wanted to show both of their stories equally. If you sit down and watch the film, they have about the same amount of screen time, which was intentional. We wanted it to come from two perspectives and show that it wasn’t just one person’s story. We wanted to show the impact they had on each other.

The word “forgive” gets thrown around a lot these days, but I feel like most people find it hard to truly forgive.
Jason: Matthew has said, “forgive but never forget”. He doesn’t want to forget what happened. It’s part of him. It’s part of his fabric, and it got him to where he is today. Even though he’s forgiven Tim, it’s always going to stick with him. I think Tim would like to forget it a little bit more. [The incident] defines them a little bit, even though it’s not necessarily what they wanted to be.

Philomena has a similar theme of forgiveness to your film, though that message seemed to be lost on a few of the people I saw it with in the theater. Your film gets straight to the point and examines forgiveness very clearly and concisely. The theme won’t be lost on anyone. Is this an advantage of the short film format?
Jason: We knew we were making a short film the beginning, so our goal was to tell the story in as complete a way as possible in this short window, but still have an arc to it so that the viewer is entertained, for lack of a better term. We wanted to hit on the key elements of each of these subjects’ lives that advanced the story. And then there was examining this forgiveness process and coming to this resolution that is where they are today. Nowadays, with short films, people are seeking them out. Part of that, unfortunately, is that people aren’t going out to theaters to see films as much.

If you’re watching a film on your laptop, cell phone, or iPad, you’re much more likely to watch a film that’s 30 minutes or less than one that’s 90 minutes. It’s how it is, and we recognize that. We want everyone to see our film on the big screen; we worked so hard on it to make it look how it looks, to make it sound how it sounds…we cringe when we think of people watching it on their cell phone. But, our ultimate goal is to get the film out there so that everyone can see it. We have a nice open and get into it in the first five minutes of the film to really suck people in, and if we can keep them…then that’s great. (laughs)

Talk about that great opening voiceover. It’s really compelling. Tim says…
Jason: “I don’t know if I could forgive somebody the way that he’s been able to forgive me.” We start the film with that to say, “this is a film about forgiveness, just so you know”.

When Tim and Matthew started doing their presentations, they weren’t even close to making amends, right?
Jason: We didn’t want it to seem like they were forced into [working together]. They weren’t ready. They weren’t comfortable with each other yet, but they did it. In retrospect, it helped, and it advanced this process that they were in. Matthew would talk about that, just being around each other, stuck on a plane or a car to go to one of these presentations, they just had face time, which is what they needed. They needed to get to know who the other is now as opposed to 26 years earlier. The process of forgiveness isn’t a cut-and-dry thing; it took them 5-7 years to get to where they were.

Their first encounter kind of defines their relationship. What’s fascinating is that these days, Matthew and Tim often only connect when one or the other is going through a hardship. They help each other through it. It’s like their relationship can only operate at a heightened emotional level.
Jason: They’ll readily admit that they’re not buddies, hanging out on the weekends. They lead very different lives. But they both know that when life is tough and they’re dealing with issues, they can pick up the phone and call the other person. Neither of them had that support structure before, especially Matthew, who was homeless on the streets and didn’t have the support of his family. He’s been able to have Tim as a confidant, [and vice versa]. It’s funny, when they do their presentations, they specifically make a point not to talk beforehand. They want to do it fresh. The way they do their presentations is they just show a short video about their story and open it up to questions.

Was the goal of the film to show that people can forgive in even the most extreme scenarios?
Jason: Not necessarily. We tried to take as objective a look at this story as we could. We’re not saying we want people to forgive or that it’s the right way to go. The goal is to have people talk and discuss, take it back to your own life, and figure out how it plays into your own situations.

Perhaps someone could never forgive what Tim had done.
Jason: Right. We’re not telling anyone that they should. It all depends upon the person. I can’t tell somebody who’s been through something even more horrific than this to forgive. I don’t know what they’re going through. To tell people that “forgiving is the answer” was definitely not the goal. A lot of people have taken that away, and we’re happy! But some people have said, “No. I could never forgive that.” We say, “Great.” As long as they think about it.

Fruitvale Station didn’t get any Oscar love, but the Bay Area’s got you representing for us at the show!
Jason: We’re totally happy that we can represent the Bay Area down there. A lot of people don’t realize that it’s a Bay Area film because it’s all shot in LA. Everything else was done here in Berkeley. It’s not on local people’s radars, but we’re trying to remind them.

[After my chat with Jason, he took me to the room where they edited the film, and I caught a quick interview with editor Tom Christopher as we sat in front of the very equipment he used to make Facing Fear.]

Now that the film has been nominated for an Oscar, how has it changed your schedule?
Tom: First of all, it’s very cool for it to have happened. It’s not something you ever count on or expect. A lot of people have been coming up to us, sending us texts, emails…it’s just been a really heightened sense of communicating with people I maybe haven’t talked to for years.

So you’ve reconnected with people through the film?
Tom: Yeah. People have heard the news, or they want to see the film, or they’ve seen it. We’ve been in about six festivals all over the country and in Amsterdam as well. It’s been interesting. Both Jason and I have reconnected with old peers and friends.

How did you react to the film personally?
Tom: This film would affect me differently every time I saw it. I haven’t worked on it for months now, but I would screen it for people occasionally. I would find that a different part would affect me each time. “This is the part where I’m getting really involved in the story, today.” There are little nodes throughout the film that can grab you. It’s a human story where you can be very empathetic to the people you’re learning about, even though they’re very different from you.

Talk about crafting the film and making it equal parts Matthew and Tim.
Tom: We were really trying to create a single voice. That’s what’s really happening. It’s not just Tim’s story or Matt’s story–it’s coming from a single voice. In editing, I tried to make it so that the men were interrupting each other, cutting each other off while they’re talking. If you were looking at this in film school, you might think, “This guy made a bad edit here!” What I’m trying to do is have them interact in some way, sometimes visually. In an interview, you’re not dealing with visuals that often, but when I was able to do it, I did. There were certain cues that would cause a place to be a great edit. Sometimes it’s a visual cue, like something they’re doing with their hands or their face. If you can interact that way, you build this unified voice, I think.

Was there ever anyone who had a problem with the film giving a voice to Tim?
Tom: On a film like this, you’re working on a very big issue, I think. I’d bring it home with me, and I’d talk about it at dinner. I’d have a lot of interesting conversations with my wife and guests at dinner. They’d ask, “How can you make this work? There’s no way!” I thought, my work is cut out for me. I can’t even get my wife to agree that I’m going down the right path. I realized that there was going to be a lot of resistance to this story, right from the first week I started working on it. It’s not a spreadsheet kind of job; you don’t put things in columns like, “I want 30 seconds of him here, now I want 35 of him.” It’s all about feel. It’s like a piece of jazz, like you’re playing an instrument.

There’s a musicality to editing.
Tom: I tap my foot when I edit. I just do. It’s a natural thing. I’m grooving with the piece. I’ve actually been in movie theaters where people say, “Stop doing that!” I get lost in the moment. This is a job that involves timing. Everything’s timed. What you’re trying to do is find a groove for the piece. The way you do that is with the pace of the cutting and the nuance to how you draw someone into what’s going on. It’s not easy. You have to be experimental.