All the 2026 Oscar-Nominated Live-Action Shorts Reviewed: Boozy Songs, Forbidden Love and Wacky Menstruation

We like to think the Academy Awards nominate the very best films of the year, and sometimes they do, but art is subjective, so let’s face it: Sometimes a few stinkers slip into the mix.

That’s not the case with this year’s Best Live-Action Shorts nominees. This category usually features a wide variety of genres and styles, but a brisk running time sometimes tricks filmmakers into going for easy and/or heavy-handed emotional beats or overbearing twists, which brings otherwise great filmmaking down a peg.

And yet the 98th annual Oscar nominees — presented together a single theatrical program, via Roadside Attractions — are all charming, disarming, harrowing and/or hilarious productions. For once the Academy, and by extension the audience, can’t go wrong.

Check out my reviews of “The Singers,” “A Friend of Dorothy,” “Butcher’s Stain,” “Two People Exchanging Saliva” and “Jane Austen’s Period Drama” below.

And don’t miss my reviews of all the Oscar-nominated animated short films and documentary short films.

‘The Singers’

Smoky and shadowy, the tavern in Sam A. Davis’s “The Singers” looks like a catacomb, illuminated by tiny lights and cigarettes. It’s here that a group of men, cold and quiet, hide from the snow after their long days at work, and wallow in their shared, yet rarely-discussed pain.

This should, by all rights, be a depressing film, but “The Singers” is instead an unexpected joy. When a man who can’t afford his drinks offers to sing for his beer, it starts a chain reaction that sweeps all the patrons up into an impromptu singing contest. The songs aren’t jolly, and include “House of the Rising Sun” and “Unchained Melody,” sung for the first time in God knows how long as if it came from a prison movie (fun fact: it did). It turns out all these burly men have a song in their hearts, sometimes a very unexpected song indeed.

Davis, who also edited and photographed “The Singers,” does an inspiring job of evoking a dreary atmosphere, then piercing it with the unlikely power of song. Also, what an ending. It’s glorious.

‘A Friend of Dorothy’

There’s usually one Oscar-nominated live-action short with famous actors in it, and this year’s is a sweet one. “A Friend of Dorothy” stars Alistair Nwachukwu as a shy teenager whose football gets stuck in an old lady’s yard. Dorothy, played by Miriam Margolyes, is an effervescent woman who recognizes the young man is a sensitive artist, and queer, before he even recognizes those qualities in himself.

Framed through the reading of Dorothy’s will — the executor, Dickie, is played by Stephen Fry — “A Friend of Dorothy” is a kindhearted, excellently crafted tearjerker. It’s also a little cliché and heavy-handed, but that’s no great sin when the storytelling is genuine and the emotions are earned. The subject matter doesn’t stand out, unlike the rest of the films on the program, but these movies were never intended to be screened together so the surrounding context is in no way writer/director Lee Knight’s fault, or even responsibility.

‘Butcher’s Stain’

Meyer Levinson-Blount’s gripping drama “Butcher’s Stain” takes place in a supermarket in Tel Aviv, where the mild-mannered butcher Samir (Omar Sameer) works for minimum wage, and likes his job. He’s a divorced dad whose ex-wife, and her new husband, always find new ways to deny him court-appointed time with his son. And now, making his life harder, someone keeps tearing down hostage posters in the supermarket break room. Samir is an Arab Israeli, and an easy target, so although he didn’t do it, someone is telling the boss he got caught in the act.

“Butcher’s Stain” tackles what should be a simple situation with so much insight and depth that it takes on an intense thriller quality. Samir is in an impossible situation. If he confesses, he’s told he won’t get in trouble, but if he confesses and it keeps happening — and it probably will, since someone else is responsible — he’ll get in even bigger trouble. So either he denies it and probably gets fired (or worse), or he falsely confesses and gets fired (or worse).

It’s such a tightly-woven net that Levinson-Blount’s film seems almost inescapable, yet the film’s smart ending reveals that “Butcher’s Stain” has a bitter sense of humor. And the final shot puts it all in a haunting, stark relief.

‘Two People Exchanging Saliva’

Visions of absurd dystopias may hit a little harder these days, since we’re officially living in one. Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh’s “Two People Exchanging Saliva” takes a “Fahrenheit 451” approach to human intimacy, and takes place in a world where kissing is forbidden — just one smooch will get you shoved in a coffin and thrown off a cliff — so nobody brushes their teeth, and everyone chews garlic gum just in case. (Then again if you love garlic, like a lot people do, the last part may seem like a minor plot hole.)

Just to hammer the point home, “Two People Exchanging Saliva” also reveals that in this bleak, black-and-white society, money has been replaced with brutality. A trip to the corner store may cost you one slap in the face. High-end clothing could get you slapped dozens of times, so walking around with a bruised face is now a symbol of your social class.

The story is about the forbidden love between a shop keeper, Malaise (Luàna Bajrami, “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”), and her wealthy client, Angine (Zar Amir Ebrahimi, “Holy Spider”). It’s increasingly likely that the two of them will (gasp!) kiss, but the ominous voice-over narration by Vicky Krieps suggests that this will not be a tale about love conquering all.

Musteata and Singh’s sci-fi allegory about queer repression, social taboo and perverse capitalism has familiar qualities. (It is, in some ways, “Carol” meets “Alphaville.”) But they are no less effective here, because “Two People Exchanging Saliva” is lushly photographed, sensitively acted and delicately balanced between its love, tragedy and satire.

‘Jane Austen’s Period Drama’

And now, the fun one! “Jane Austen’s Period Drama” stars Julia Aks, who co-wrote and co-directed with Steve Pinder, as Miss Estrogenia Talbot, the protagonist of a suspiciously recognizable but technically new Jane Austen story. Just like at the end of “Sense & Sensibility” (wink) it appears that the elder sister will finally get engaged to the man she loves, Mr. James Dickley (Ta’imua). Unlike at the end of “Sense & Sensibility” her proposal gets interrupted when Mr. Dickley sees that she’s bleeding through her dress. So he panics and carries her home to save her life.

Yes, polite society is so polite that men have literally never heard of menstruating. When Estrogenia gets home, she and her sisters are in a spot. Do they explain what a period is and risk losing Mr. Dickley forever, or do they go whole hog, slaughter a chicken, smear her with blood and play it up like she’s dying?

It’s one joke, but it’s an incredibly funny joke, and the spot-on satire of Ang Lee’s beloved Austen adaptation adds multiple layers of whimsy for anybody picking up on those details. The cinematic flourishes go a long way towards elevating “Jane Austen’s Period Drama” beyond what could have been just a memorable “Saturday Night Live” sketch, and into a truly brilliant short comedy.

Oh yes, and the scene where Estrogenia’s little sister runs down a hallway brandishing a chicken and a knife, screaming “WOMEN’S BUSINESS!” is quite possibly the funniest scene from any movie in the last year. Aks and Pinder’s film should probably have been nominated for that moment alone.

The post All the 2026 Oscar-Nominated Live-Action Shorts Reviewed: Boozy Songs, Forbidden Love and Wacky Menstruation appeared first on TheWrap.