Short of the Week was born in 2007, the heyday of the hipster—skinny jeans and band T-shirts were the uniform, complementing personalities defined not only by what you liked but, importantly, when you liked it.

And, if we’re being honest, short film fandom is kinda hipster. We like shorts because they can be scrappy, original, and risk-taking, but they are relatively obscure, so there is a certain flattery towards one’s discernment and taste when cultivating a deep short film knowledge. Also, of course, opportunities abound for smugness when talents break out since you knew about them before others did.

2000s fashion is making a comeback, and it’s interesting to see that the directors ascending Hollywood’s status ladder had their formative film experiences during this period. Four of the five nominees for Oscar® Best Director released their debut short film in the 2000s. This generation of filmmakers was the first to grow up in a digital, streaming era, and as we remarked three years ago in our retrospective on the DANIELS, now, for the first time, the most admired film talents in the world have easily accessible short films on the internet. 

So, as we pay attention to the current class of Oscar® nominees and wonder if Sam Davis or John Kelly can ascend to the level of globally respected auteur, it’s also fun to look at the short films of those who are currently the toast of the town—both for enjoyment, but also education, especially if you are an emerging talent who would like to see what it took for these artists to begin to make a name for themselves.

We’ve collected early shorts from the five nominees into a Shortverse collection, and they represent interesting and varied paths to their current success. More info below:

Click to visit the collection on Shortverse

Paul Thomas Anderson: The elder statesman of the class, The Dirk Diggler Story (1988) is pretty rough and not really at all similar to what, nine years later, would become Boogie Nights. But, it is a fascinating early artifact, and a testament to the longevity of creative ideas. Cigarettes & Coffee (1993), on the other hand, went to Sundance and aspects were almost directly adapted into the opening scene of the filmmaker’s debut feature, Hard Eight. As a bonus, we also have Anima (2018), a music/performance piece in collaboration with Thom Yorke that is on Netflix.

Ryan Coogler: The filmmaker’s two IMDb-listed USC film school shorts are included. Locks (2009) is available on Vimeo, and while modest, the 7min Tribeca-selected short is powerful, and predicts some of the themes later explored in the filmmaker’s Sundance breakthrough, Fruitvale Station. Fig (2011) was more acclaimed in its time, winning the HBO Short Film Competition at ABFF and the DGA Student Film Award, and it streams for free on Kanopy if you have a library card from a participating institution.

Josh Safdie: Safdie, along with his brother Benny, has a ludicrously long filmography stuffed with skits, experiments, short docs, and other visual artifacts. Diehard fans have been obsessive in collecting them all, but we’ll stick to three films for this collection. We’re Going to the Zoo (2006) is notable as the work where the director’s POV began to gel. In an interview with Le Cinema Club, he says, “It was THE moment when I figured out how to speak ‘film.’” John’s Gone (2010) is the film that immediately followed their breakout debut feature, Daddy Longlegs (2009), and played at Venice—something pretty rare for American directors. Benny’s performance in it is something of a prototype for the type of hustler eventually portrayed by Robert Pattinson, Adam Sandler, and Timotheé Chalamet in future features. Finally, we end with the brother’s Sundance and SXSW-winning homage to one of the most famous short films of all time, with 2012’s The Black Balloon.

Joachim Trier: Trier, like Spike Jonze before him, got into filmmaking through skateboarding videography before leaving Norway and attending film school in the UK. Courtesy of the NFTS, we have three of Trier’s student shorts, which also represent the beginning of his partnership with Eskil Vogt, his longtime co-writer. Pieta (1999) and Still (2001) are worth watching, but Procter (2002), made immediately upon graduation, is the essential one, as it represented the filmmaker’s continental breakthrough, winning a top prize at Edinburgh and being nominated for the European Film Award.

Chloe Zhao: The one hole in our collection today is Zhao, who does not have any of her four credited short films available to view in full. Information about them on the internet has largely been wiped—not on purpose, one assumes, but the filmmaker’s old website no longer works. We’ve included the film page for her NYU student short, Daughters (2010), for the sake of completeness, and there is a trailer for it, which evokes a strong Raise the Red Lantern vibe. It won Best Student Short Live Action 15 Minutes and Under at the 2010 Palm Springs Film Fest, and this Indiewire news piece is a fascinating time capsule. Written by Eugene Hernandez, who is now the Festival Director at Sundance, so many of these winners ended up being Short of the Week picks! But, I did not attend and have no memory of Zhao’s film. I think the only place to see her shorts now is in person at Clermont-Ferrand’s video library, something I might put on my to-do list for next year…

Oscar night has been a triumphal showcase for short film talents in recent years, with Short of the Week regulars Daniels and Gints Zilbalodis taking home statuettes in major categories. We hope that this trend continues in 2026, as Geeta Gandbhir contends in Best Documentary Feature, and Clint Bentley’s Train Dreams vies for Best Picture. 

Truthfully, though, many film talents come up through shorts, whether they make it to Short of the Week or not, and so while we root for our alums, our primary focus remains on the three categories that truly hold our interest. As we’ve done in recent years, this article is one last opportunity for us to champion the films we love while also looking at past trends to guess how the Academy might vote.

While we do not engage in any special research or devise a prediction algorithm, historically, our predictions have been fairly accurate. Our recent track record: perfect in 2022, and 2 of 3 in 2023 and 2024.

Last year, however, we were derailed. None of our predictions took home the prize! Our disappointment at this development was tempered by seeing our favorite in the Live Action category, I Am Not a Robot by Victoria Warmerdam, win the award, but we’ve got a lot to prove this year to get back on track. 

We’ve redoubled our efforts in 2026 in order to redeem ourselves. Here are our predictions for Best Animated Short Film, Best Documentary Short Film, and Best Live Action Short Film at the Academy Awards (98th edition). Good luck to all the contenders, and good luck to you and your Oscar pools!

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Best Animated Short Film

Prediction: Retirement Plan by John Kelly

In a lovely twist, we have the feeling that our favorite in the Animation category might also be the winner. The Venn diagram of our tastes and that of the Academy as a whole possesses only a tiny overlap, but this year, John Kelly’s Retirement Plan might find itself right in the middle.

Since its World Premiere in Galway in July 2024, Retirement Plan has taken the festival circuit by storm. Anyone who pays attention to the scene simply cannot have missed this film. Picking up the Audience and Jury Awards at SXSW, it’s been on a prize tear, earning the most Qualifying awards of any film in the category.

While Academy members may not be overly influenced by festival recognition, the film’s varied qualities seem to have put everyone in agreement, having found a way to resonate with different audiences. The animation style is clean and appealing, the film is refreshingly short at only 7-minutes, it has a celebrity angle with Domhnall Gleeson providing its voice-over, and its bittersweet, sentimental message is universal and moving. Maybe it is wishful thinking, but if we were to put money on an outcome, we’d go with Retirement Plan.

What We Hope Wins: Retirement Plan by John Kelly

As the only S/W selection in the category, Retirement Plan being ‘our pick’ is a foregone conclusion, but this is no “least-worst option.” The film’s undeniable charm simply made it one of our favorite shorts of the year. Deeply compelling, it leaves you with an urgent need for introspection and is the rare film that can linger long past its runtime. The writing is outstanding, and paired with Gleeson’s engrossing voice, gives a poetic and engaging rhythm to the film, while its simple yet delightful animation style is simply a cherry on top. This is the kind of film that you not only remember watching but also remember how it made you feel.

Picks by Céline Roustan

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Best Documentary Short Film

Prediction: All the Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel

There is a credible argument for most of the films in this category: Geeta Gandbhir is the betting favorite for Best Documentary Feature, which could aid her and Christalyn Hampton’s short, The Devil is Busy. Doing the double would be a great story! HBO’s other nominee, Armed With Only a Camera, is a familial tribute to a fallen artist so powerful that a scripted adaptation was just announced. While there is no shortage of options, I would not argue if you chose the Gaza war as the most dominant geopolitical issue of the past couple of years, so does that favor Children No More, and its legendary producer, Sheila Nevins?

Yet, I argue All the Empty Rooms, a film which follows a celebrated journalist on his journey to photograph the preserved rooms of children who fell victim to school shootings, should be considered the favorite heading into Sunday. This is for a pair of reasons: first, Netflix is its distributor and has taken over from HBO as the 800-pound gorilla in this category. I underestimated Only Girl in the Orchestra last year, and won’t make that mistake twice. The second is that the film is the most emotionally affecting of the nominees, and on that important criterion, it can be argued as the most effective. As mentioned in our Voters’ Guide leading into the nomination phase, there is an admirable degree of restraint in Seftel’s film that allows the power of the Hartman and Bopp photo project to shine through, via a contemplative approach that pleasingly echoes the underlying premise of reflection and remembrance.

What We Hope Wins: perfectly a strangeness by Alison McAlpine

While I was very moved by All the Empty Rooms, and will not object to its likely victory (an 86% chance according to Gold Derby), I find it interesting to note that I subsequently watched the 60 Minutes segment on Hartman and Bopp’s photo project, and it elicited an almost identical degree of emotion. How could this be? Seftel’s spare, observational treatment and the structured, formulaic journalism of 60 Minutes are almost diametrically opposite forms of documentary storytelling! What it suggests to me is that the true power of All the Empty Rooms lies in the underlying project itself, of which this short is simply one of multiple expressions. That does not invalidate what Seftel achieves, but it is an important contextualization when seeking to deliver life-changing honors.

Therefore, I’ll argue for the only short I absolutely cannot see winning. This is not me simply being contrarian; I genuinely love perfectly a strangeness, and wrote a bit about what I liked about it in our voters’ guide.

While my appreciation for the film remains undimmed, this choice does contain a germ of protest against the larger Oscar superstructure. I think it would be very healthy for perfectly a strangeness to win. Documentary is the most stagnant of the three Oscar categories, and it feels as though the same variations on hot-button issues and sympathetic character profiles keep advancing every year, with little to no variation in length, tone, or perspective. perfectly a strangeness is a shock to this—it is, frankly, bizarre that this Cannes-premiering short has even made it this far, as it is the least conventional nominee in recent memory. Calling it a “documentary”, in fact, feels like a stretch, and I would probably have settled on two other primary classifications before arriving at that one. But its sheer outlier status has the potential to light the way to a future for the category that is more adventurous, playful, and risk-taking.

Picks by Jason Sondhi

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Best Live-Action Short Film

Prediction: The Singers by Sam Davis

I have to admit, in recent years, we’ve found that predicting the winner of the Best Live Action Short Film Oscar has become increasingly tricky. It honestly used to feel a bit easier to get inside the head of an Academy voter. Who seemed to respond more to subject matter than originality – “Oscar bait” has long been part of the short film categories too. However, last year voters surprised us by choosing what was, in our view, the best film of the nominees: I Am Not a Robot. Now, our usual way of predicting things is slightly off.

You could make a strong argument for any of this year’s nominees: a topical drama touching on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, an LGBTQ+ dramedy, a “period” comedy, a dystopian vision that echoes modern realities, and an emotive dive-bar drama picked up by Netflix. But in the end, we’re going to bet on the influence of that streaming giant and back Sam Davis’ The Singers to take Oscar glory.

A favourite on the festival circuit, The Singers is strikingly original, deeply immersive, and – perhaps most importantly when it comes to Oscar voters – it delivers when it comes to emotional stakes. At this point, we just can’t see past Davis’ film.

What We Hope Wins: The Singers by Sam Davis

While we’ve already backed Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s impressive short film Two People Exchanging Saliva here on Short of the Week, it was honestly a toss-up between that film and Sam Davis’ The Singers as our personal favourite. However, with Davis’ work featured multiple times on our platform over the years, he’s a filmmaker we’ve followed for a long time – and a talent we’ve believed in from early on. Because of that, The Singers ultimately becomes our pick for Best Live Action Short Film.

Whether Academy voters will agree is something we’ll find out soon enough, but Davis’ short is the one that most closely aligns with the Short of the Week ethos – bold, distinctive filmmaking that connects emotionally and lands a reverberating impact. It’s the film we’re personally hoping to see rewarded when the ceremony rolls around on Sunday.

Picks by Rob Munday

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View previous Oscar-nominated films, winners, and further coverage from the awards on our dedicated channel.

It was the Movies’ big night, and a big night for Shorts too! Doc Shorts even got a rare shoutout during Conan O’Brien’s opening monologue, and at one point the telecast practically ground to a halt thanks to the sheer volume of cheering in the auditorium.

Just a few years ago, the three short film categories were nearly dropped from the broadcast altogether. This year, though, they delivered some of the night’s best moments: a rare piece of Oscar history repeated itself, one winning film’s central subject made a powerful plea on stage, and the filmmakers used their time to share heartfelt messages of hope — and remind us of the power of art to shape a better world.⁠

Congrats to all the nominees, but here are the winners, along with short commentary from S/W co-founder, Jason Sondhi. 

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Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film

Winner: The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis & Maciek Szczerbowski

Smart money had coalesced around Butterfly, and we chose Retirement Plan in our official prediction post. All this shows how the machinations of award season can obscure more than they clarify, because if you asked us last June what would win, this would have been our pick. It’s a fine choice too—we really like the film—and it’s well deserved that Lavis and Szczerbowski earn their statuettes 19 years after failing to win for Madame Tutli-Putli. The legacy of that short has grown through the years with its continued success online, to the point that it is now unquestionably a modern classic. Congrats to the National Film Board for this win, and here’s hoping The Girl Who Cried Pearls can follow a similar trajectory. 

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Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film

Winner: All the Empty Rooms by Joshua Seftel

Another win for Netflix, and another redemption story, with Seftel earning a statuette in his second try. All the Empty Rooms was our predicted winner and in our minds a worthy one—it’s a tasteful and truly moving film experience, containing a vital message against the normalization of school shootings in America. Accompanied on stage by the mother of Jackie, one of the murdered children whose rooms were photographed in the film, Seftel ceded the mic, and her heartfelt plea ended up being one of the most powerful moments of the evening. 

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Academy Award for Best Live-Action Short Film

Winner (Tie!): The Singers by Sam Davis & Two People Exchanging Saliva by Natalie Musteata & Alexandre Singh

Holy moly, history made! Only the 7th tie in Oscar history, and the first since 2012. Pundits were split between the two films, and we were too. Davis has graced the pages of S/W many times, and we featured Musteata and Singh’s film in November. It was hard to choose, and ultimately, the Academy didn’t have to, with both film teams having their moment on the stage. The split win also recognizes the two most effective acquirers of Oscar shorts right now—Netflix and The New Yorker. 

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View previous Oscar-nominated films, winners, and further coverage from the awards on our dedicated CHANNEL.