2026 Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Major Themes, Minor Lengths

This year’s live-action nominees range from dive-bar patrons to Regency paramours, and from chilly science fiction to Middle Eastern politics, and they are almost uniformly striking visually. Sam A. Davis’s The Singers is an unexpectedly uplifting visit to a blue-collar bar, based on a 19th-century short story, dense with smoke and jaggedly overlapping conversations; it sources voices from viral videos and makes notable use of Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time.” Other live-action entries include Meyer Levinson-Blount’s Butcher’s Stain, a sensitive drama about a Palestinian butcher falsely accused of desecrating posters of political hostages, and Lee Knight’s A Friend of Dorothy, an utterly charming tale of friendship between an octogenarian (Miriam Margolyes) and a teenager (Alistair Nwachukwu).

oscar shorts, live-action, the singers, leonard cohen, closing time, butcher's stain, meyer levinson-blount, lee knight, miriam margolyes, alistair nwachukwu