Get the latest gossip
‘2025 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary’ Review: Take Your Pick Between Endemic Violence and Escapist Music
Two themes emerge among the doc short nominees, as voters decide between hard-hitting issue docs and lighter portraits on the unifying power of music.
At 23 minutes, director Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s portrait of the competitive young musicians — who cry when criticized and act like their lives are ruined when another student is tapped to play their instrument of choice — must have worked voters’ heartstrings. The program then takes a hard-hitting turn into social justice territory, as archival footage master Bill Morrison (“Decasia”) re-creates a 2018 altercation between five police officers and a Black barber, Harith “Snoop” Augustus, who was killed by cops in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. As if watching an inexperienced officer preemptively shoot a civilian five times in the back weren’t enough to make your blood boil, the cops’ subsequent behavior is all the more egregious: leaving Augustus to die in the street as they scramble to protect their own.
Or read this on Variety