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Much was said last month about how the Sundance Film Festival and the Academy Awards don't have a lot in common in terms of diversity (or lack thereof).
One thing they do have in common, though: They both do a great job of fostering a love for short films.
The short films nominated in the animated and live-action categories — compiled by Shorts International in an annual touring show that opens Friday at the Tower Theatre — demonstrate once again that length isn't always necessary to convey depth. (The nominated short documentaries will debut at the Tower next week.)
The animated program is better, because it has perhaps the best short film to be made in the past few years: Don Hertzfeldt's strange, quirky "World of Tomorrow." This short (which won the top prize at Sundance 2015) depicts an encounter between a little girl and her time-traveling future self, and is wholly original and hauntingly beautiful.
Fans of Pixar will recognize "Sanjay's Super Team," as it played with "The Good Dinosaur" this fall. Director Sanjay Patel's personal tale of a superhero-obsessed Indian boy learning to respect his father's Hindu beliefs is colorful and charming.
Gabriel Osorio Vargas' "Bear Story," a Chilean drama about a bear who loses his family, and Konstantin Bronzit's "We Can't Live Without Cosmos," a Russian story about cosmonauts in training, are richly rendered and feature bittersweet endings. And British animator Richard Williams (best known for "Who Framed Roger Rabbit") explores the nature of war in "Prologue," a perfectly drawn but unsettlingly violent 6-minute short.
Shorts International includes four more animated shorts to pad out the program, which would otherwise be over in 57 minutes. The most fun of the lot is "The Loneliest Stoplight," a collaboration between animator Bill Plympton and comedian Patton Oswalt.
Two offbeat comedies and three dark dramas vie in the live-action shorts category.
On the comedy side: "Ave Maria," Basil Khalil's funny story from Palestine about a Jewish couple who find themselves needing help from an order of Catholic nuns, and the British romantic tale "Stutterer," directed by Benjamin Cleary, in which a young man (Matthew Needham) with a debilitating stutter panics at the thought of meeting his longtime online pen pal (Chloe Pirrie).
The dramas, though, are particularly good, if upsetting. Jamie Donoghue's "Shok," set in Kosovo, features a man remembering back to the Yugoslav civil war and a fateful encounter with Serbian militias. Patrick Vollrath's German/Austrian drama "Everything Will Be Okay" follows a divorced father (Simon Schwarz) taking his 8-year-old daughter (Julia Pointner) for the weekend, but she soon sees things aren't quite right.
Then there's your likely Oscar winner: "Day One." Writer-director Henry Hughes, adapting from his own experiences serving in Afghanistan, follows an Arab-language interpreter (Layla Alizada) on an eventful first day in the field. It's gritty, moving and perfectly paced.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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Oscar-nominated animated shorts
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Oscar-nominated live-action shorts
Comedy, drama and everything in between, capped by Don Hertzfeldt's brilliant "World of Tomorrow."
Where • Tower Theatre.
When • Opens Friday, Feb. 5.
Rating • Not rated; animated program has one short with R-level violence and nudity; the live-action program contains some wartime violence and language that would likely get an R rating.
Running time • Animated program is 86 minutes; the live-action program is 107 minutes, and four of the five shorts are subtitled.