Oscars 2013 Category Breakdown: Best Documentary – Short Subject

Every year, leading up to the Oscars, I break down every single category. It’s essentially a precursor to my picks. I explain all the stuff that needs to be explained in detail, so when the time comes to make my picks, I can refer to it as a shorthand.

In the articles, I’ll go over each category’s history, show previous winners and nominees, then list the current year’s nominees, talk about the guild history, if it’s important, what the guilds went with this year, whether that means anything for that particular category — all the background you need to know to make an informed decision. And then, once that’s all done, I’ll rank the nominees in that category in order of their likelihood to win, based on how I see it at the present.

The only difference between this year and previous years is that this year, I’ll be doing only one category a day instead of multiple categories. This is so I can take more time with each category and not stuff a bunch into a single article for information overload, and, simply, so I don’t have to do as much work. Though it is also easier this way. One category, one day.

Today, we’re doing Best Documentary, Short Subject, which is a category no one knows anything about ever, and assumes is impossible to pick. But actually, this is one of the easier categories each year, since usually you can narrow it down to two choices, with one clear favorite.

As you can see, they go for very specific things in this category, and they’re very consistent in their tastes. Which makes this somewhat of an easy category each year, since you can usually take your knowledge of what they usually go for and narrow the nominees down to two surefire choices.

Just look –

2012 — about a girl who is homeless but continues to paint so as not to give into her surroundings.

2011 — about a doctor who performs surgeries on women in Iran who have had acid thrown in their faces.

2010 — about a school in Israel that has children from 30 different countries and all sorts of different backgrounds, coming together to learn.

2009 — about a girl with a deformity who makes music in a country where people with her condition would normally be cast aside or left for dead.

2008 — about a little girl in India who is given surgery to fix a cleft palate.

2007 — about a dying police officer who wants to give her death benefits to her partner, but the state won’t let her because they don’t consider same-sex relationships legitimate.

2006 — about children in China who lost their parents to AIDS.

Right there, you know exactly what they go for. Big issues, children, the power of art to overcome adversity… typically people overcoming a big issue in a third world country, sometimes with art. Just knowing that, you can automatically narrow down each category.

Best Documentary – Short Subject

CaveDigger

Facing Fear

Karama Has No Walls

The Lady in Number Six: Music Saved My Life

Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall

Remember how I said you can usually narrow it down? Yeah… maybe not so much this year.

Or maybe you can. I don’t know. Let’s recap what they’re all about, since I know next to no one even knows what these things are:

CaveDigger is about a guy who creates beautiful dwellings inside caves (that look like this).

Facing Fear is about a man who, when he was a kid and thrown out by his parents for being gay, was beaten up by some neo-Nazis. And, by chance, years later, he ran into one of the people who beat him up, and he and the guy became friends and now work toward fighting hate crimes and promoting understanding.

Karama Has No Walls is about the day during the 2011 Yemen uprising when government snipers killed 50 people. And they have two fathers talking about how their children died that day, and advocate for change and all that.

The Lady in Number Six is about the oldest living Holocaust survivor, who is 109, who used music to help her get through her time in the camps and continues to play music every day.

Prison Terminal is about a man serving a life sentence who is in the final days of a terminal illness. It’s more about the hospice volunteers, who are themselves prisoners, who care for him.

Now, just knowing that, doesn’t that make this category so much easier? The only problem is, at first glance you can see about three or four clear choices this year. So it’s a bit more difficult than usual. Though, even so, I can see a clear #1 choice, so at least there’s that.

Rankings:

5. Facing Fear — From the sound of it, it seems like an obvious choice. And from what I hear, it’s not particularly emotional, which is something they often go for in this category. They want big issues, children, deformities, the transcendent abilities of art — things like that. This sounds like it doesn’t hit those things they look for when voting for this. It could win (anything could), but I just don’t see this one happening. I bet it sounds more interesting than it plays.

4. Karama Has No Walls – This one is tough, because it could either gain or lose votes depending on how The Square does in Best Documentary. Since it’s basically a similar story as that one. Maybe they vote for one and not the other, maybe they vote for neither, I don’t know. It does theoretically have some of the things they go for here — big issue and children. Children being killed because of an oppressive government and civil rights violations and all that stuff. So they might go for it, and it sounds like something that could win. But I don’t know — something tells me if they’re gonna go for it, they’re gonna go for it in Documentary as opposed to here, which they much prefer more emotional tales that make them feel things.

3. CaveDigger – This one has the beauty factor working for it. They might take a look at it and go, “Wow,” and vote for it on that alone. This is still one of the five categories (along with Live-Action Short, Animated Short, Documentary Feature and Foreign Language Film) where people can only vote if they can attest to having seen all of the nominees. Which is why I only have this third. From the sound of it, it’s more visually beautiful than anything. The guy who designs the cave is pretty eccentric, and apparently also not the most accessible person in the world, which might keep people from voting for this. They like it when the person is accessible and uses their art to greater purpose. Like last year, with Inocente, which was about a girl who was homeless but still strived to be an artist anyway. They like that. This is a dude who built caves for people, had a lot of disagreements with them about how he made them, and then stopped so he could make his own personal “masterpiece.” It doesn’t grab them, so I’m hesitant to call this a favorite because of that.

2. Prison Terminal – This one could tug at their heartstrings. Prisoners caring for other prisoners, hospice workers… this might be something they could go for. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this win. Just glancing at what typically wins in this category, I’d say, of the five, this passes a sight test. It’s not #1, of course, since there’s clearly another one that screams “winner” in this category, but this one definitely has a shot.

1. The Lady in Number 6 – How can you not consider this the winner? Holocaust, music, music being used to transcend horrific circumstances, and she’s 109 and still alive. Just fucking give it the Oscar now. If this loses, I won’t be surprised (because it’s Documentary Short, how can you be?), but how can you not consider this the absolute favorite to win? Who won’t vote for this on the fact that she’s 109 alone? You have to consider this the favorite. Have to. You can vote however you want, but you’d be nuts to not put this #1 until it loses.

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So that’s Documentary Short. Tomorrow, that’s right, you guessed it, Frank Stallone Animated Short.

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