Sorry Swifties, the dream is dead. The Academy announced the shortlist for the Oscars Live Action Short Film category and neither Taylor Swift’s “All Too Well” or fellow music superstar Kendrick Lamar’s “We Cry Together” made the cut. (Swift did make the shortlist in the Original Song category for her tune “Carolina” from “Where the Crawdads Sing.”)
Of the 200 films that qualified in the category, 15 will advance, including “Warsha,” the tale of a Syrian migrant worker operating a crane in Beirut, “An Irish Goodbye,” a film about two brothers and a bucket list, and “The Red Suitcase,” featuring an Iranian teenager’s airport crisis.
In animation, the Academy embraced a variety of tales and tails, including animal-centric submissions “Save Ralph,” featuring a bunny employed as a product tester in a lab, “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” about an unlikely bunch of travel companions, and “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It,” a film whose title explains itself.
81 films qualified in the Animated Short Film category this year, with 15 films advancing.
Members of the Short Films and Feature Animation Branch vote to determine the shortlist and, ultimately, the category nominees. For Live Action Short Film, members Short Films and Feature Animation, Directors, Producers and Writers Branches take on the responsibility.
The Live Action and Animated Short shortlists were announced by the Academy on Wednesday along with the lists of semifinalists in eight other categories.
ANIMATED SHORT FILM:
“Black Slide”
“The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse”
“The Debutante”
“The Flying Sailor”
“The Garbage Man”
“Ice Merchants”
“It’s Nice in Here”
“More than I Want to Remember”
“My Year of Dicks”
“New Moon”
“An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It”
“Passenger”
“Save Ralph”
“Sierra”
“Steakhouse”
LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM:
“All in Favor”
“Almost Home”
“An Irish Goodbye”
“Ivalu”
“Le Pupille”
“The Lone Wolf”
“Nakam”
“Night Ride”
“Plastic Killer”
“The Red Suitcase”
“The Right Words”
“Sideral”
“The Treatment”
“Tula”
“Warsha”
The final Oscar nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2023, with the 95th Academy Awards airing on ABC on March 12, 2023.