Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced shortlists in ten categories for the 94th Academy Awards, which included seven shorts by U.S. Latinx and Latin American filmmakers in the documentary, animation, and live action short film categories.
In the live action short film competition one U.S. Latinx and one Brazilian film made it to the second round: Please Hold by Chicana director K.D. Davila and Under the Heavens / Seiva Bruta by Brazilian director Gustavo Milan. Set in the near future, Please Hold tells the story of a young working-class Latinx who is wrongfully arrested. Realizing he has no means of recourse in the fully automated and privatized justice system, he attempts to reach a human who can set things right. Under the Heavens follows Marta, a young Venezuelan mother, is immigrating to Brazil when she meets a struggling young couple with a baby girl. Her ability to breastfeed causes their fates to become forever entwined.
The Chilean film Bestia by Hugo Covarrubias, was shortlisted for best animation short film. Inspired by real events, the film enters the life of a secret police agent in the military dictatorship in Chile. The relationship with her dog, her body, her fears and frustrations, reveal a macabre fracture in her mind and a country.
Four U.S. Latinx films were announced in the shortlist for best documentary short film: Águilas by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and Maite Zubiaurre; The Facility by Seth Freed Wessler; Lead Me Home by Brazilian-born director Pedro Kos and Jon Shenk; and Takeover by Emma Francis-Snyder.
Águilas is the story of a group of searchers, the Águilas del Desierto, in the southern desert border in Arizona. Once a month these volunteers—construction workers, gardeners, domestic laborers by trade—set out to recover the missing, reported to them by loved ones often thousands of miles away. Amidst rising political repression and cartel violence, as well as the eternal difficulties of travel in the Sonoran Desert, the Águilas carry out their solemn task.
In The Facility, first-time director Wessler documents the harrowing circumstances of people locked in an ICE detention center as Covid slowly spreads through the facility. Poignant stories of homelessness on the West Coast of the US frame Lead Me Home offers, a cinematic portrait of a surging humanitarian crisis. Produced by the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, Takeover tells the story of a group of activists, the Young Lords, who in 1970 take over a decrepit hospital in the South Bronx launching a battle for their lives, their community, and healthcare for all.
The nominations for the 94th Academy Awards will be announced on Tuesday, February 8, 2022.
