The race for the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film is gathering momentum, and the international film festival circuit is already helping to identify some of the shorts generating attention this awards season.
From Cannes, Sundance and TIFF to HollyShorts, LA Shorts, Raindance, Dallas, Clermont-Ferrand and Aesthetica, this year’s contenders have travelled through some of the world’s most influential festivals. The emerging field encompasses childhood trauma, migration, masculinity, mortality, identity, loneliness and moral compromise.
As the journey towards the 99th Academy Awards continues, We Love Short Films takes a look at ten live-action shorts making their presence felt.
ECHOES — Alex Lanipekun
Written and directed by Alex Lanipekun, Echoes brings together an impressive British cast including Ashley Walters, Nathalie Emmanuel, Emmett J. Scanlan and Leo Gregory. The film follows successful businessman Andre, whose unexpected reunion with Robert, a homeless childhood friend, forces buried memories from their boarding-school years back to the surface.
The film has been building momentum on the festival circuit, including HollyShorts Film Festival, where it emerged among the festival’s live-action contenders. Its international journey continues with screenings including Aesthetica Short Film Festival and the London Independent Film Festival, extending its reach with audiences in the UK and beyond.
An intimate exploration of childhood trauma, friendship and the radically different paths lives can take, Echoes combines a high-profile ensemble with deeply personal subject matter.
VULTURES — Dian Weys
South African filmmaker Dian Weys creates a tense moral pressure cooker with Vultures. After arriving at the scene of a car accident before the authorities, a desperate tow-truck driver becomes determined to protect his claim to the wreck, only for events to spiral rapidly beyond his control.
Its festival pedigree is considerable. Vultures competed in the Short Film Competition at the Cannes Film Festival, before travelling to Tribeca, where it had its New York premiere. It subsequently screened at HollyShorts, winning Best International.
Set around a deceptively simple situation, the film examines economic desperation, self-interest and what people are capable of when survival is at stake.
NEVER GIVE UP! — Tamás Yvan Topolánszky
Writer-director Tamás Yvan Topolánszky’s Never Give Up! follows a young boy separated from his mother during a deadly border crossing and left alone in the desert with a damaged phone and the words she taught him to live by: never give up.
Starring nine-year-old José María Gómez “Chema” alongside Ariana Lebrón, the film has used its festival journey to take this intimate story to international audiences, including a run with Manhattan Short Film Festival, whose selected finalists screen to audiences around the world.
The film uses one child’s struggle for survival to explore migration, hope and a deceptively complicated question: who ultimately owns a message — the person who speaks it or the person who hears it?
THE CATCHER — Luka Galle
Belgian filmmaker Luka Galle offers one of the more unusual premises in the field with The Catcher. Robin is a lonely young man employed by the government to catch invisible birds, but beneath the surreal concept is a recognisably human story about loneliness, discrimination and social exclusion.
The film premiered at Filmfestival Oostende, receiving a Jury Special Mention, before travelling to festivals including the Brussels Short Film Festival, Florida Film Festival, Alexandria Short Film Festival, Beeston Film Festival and Ravenheart International Film Festival. Crucially for its Oscar journey, it won Best International Short Film at the Academy Award-qualifying Alexandria Short Film Festival.
It is a striking example of how fantasy can be used to explore something universal: the basic human desire to feel visible.
MEETING YOUR MAKER — Gregory J.M. Kasunich
Written and directed by Gregory J.M. Kasunich, Meeting Your Maker finds existential crisis in an unlikely place. Its protagonist, Otis, is the puppet star of a long-running children’s television programme who begins questioning his career, purpose and very existence as the show approaches a milestone episode.
Its festival run has brought significant recognition, including the Grand Jury Prize for Narrative Short at the Dallas International Film Festival and Best Short Comedy at Woods Hole Film Festival.
Featuring Jonathan Kite, Thomas Lennon, Lenny Jacobson and Randy and Jason Sklar, the dark comedy uses its wonderfully absurd premise to explore creative burnout, depression and identity.
I AM THE PRIZE — Sai Karan Talwar
Russell Tovey takes centre stage in Sai Karan Talwar’s I Am the Prize, playing Anthony Selvon, a provocative motivational figure operating in the world of modern masculinity and self-improvement.
The film has enjoyed a particularly strong festival run, with appearances at Raindance, Frameline, HollyShorts, Out On Film and the San Jose International Short Film Festival. At HollyShorts, Tovey won Best Performance, while the film was also nominated for Best Live Action Short, Grand Prix and Best Director.
As cracks appear in Anthony’s carefully constructed persona, the film examines the gulf between public confidence and private insecurity and the seductive appeal of people who claim to have all the answers.
LIFE GOES ON — Kat Butterfield & Daniel Audritt
Mortality meets time-loop comedy in Kat Butterfield and Daniel Audritt’s Life Goes On. David Bradley plays Bill, a man in end-of-life care who is ready to die — except every time his heart stops, his day begins all over again.
The film won the Grand Jury Prize for Best International Short Film at the Academy Award-qualifying Dallas International Film Festival and subsequently continued its run through festivals including Indy Shorts and HollyShorts. At HollyShorts it reached the Top 10 Live Action films and received nominations including Best Live Action and Best Director.
With a cast that also includes Maggie Steed, Laura Checkley, Matt Berry and Amanda Root, the film uses dark humour to approach mortality, family, regret and the conversations people sometimes leave until it is almost too late.
MAGID / ZAFAR — Luís Hindman
Set largely inside a British Pakistani takeaway, Luís Hindman’s Magid / Zafar follows childhood friends Magid and Zafar as an intense shift forces long-suppressed truths to the surface on the eve of Magid’s traditional mehndi wedding.
Its festival and awards journey has already been substantial. The film was selected for the BFI London Film Festival Short Film Competition and Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival, won Best British Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards and went on to receive a BAFTA nomination for Best British Short Film.
Written by Hindman and Sufiyaan Salam, the film explores friendship, sexuality, cultural identity and family expectations, asking what happens when the life expected of someone comes into conflict with the life they actually want.
JAZZ INFERNAL — Will Niava
Writer-director Will Niava draws on music, migration and personal loss in Jazz Infernal, an evocative story following Koffi, a young Ivorian trumpeter who arrives in Montreal carrying the burden of his father’s musical legacy.
Jazz Infernal began its major festival journey at the Toronto International Film Festival before screening at the 2026 Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Short Film Jury Award: International Fiction. Its subsequent festival appearances have included REGARD and Palm Springs International ShortFest.
Blending an immigrant story with jazz and a deeply personal father-son journey, Niava explores grief, cultural identity and the search for a voice of one’s own.
I WILL BE ALRIGHT — Cyrus Neshvad
Oscar-nominated filmmaker Cyrus Neshvad, whose The Red Suitcase earned an Academy Award nomination, returns to short filmmaking with I Will Be Alright.
The film made an immediate impact on the festival circuit at the LA Shorts International Film Festival, winning the festival’s Oscar-qualifying Best of Fest award. It has also been selected for the Tirana International Film Festival.
Centred on a young Iranian girl who has fled Iran and disguises herself as the Statue of Liberty to earn money, the film continues Neshvad’s exploration of displacement, borders and the human consequences of immigration systems.
FROM THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT TO THE OSCAR RACE
What makes this group particularly interesting is not only how different the films are, but the variety of festival routes that have brought them into the conversation.
Cannes, Sundance, TIFF, HollyShorts, LA Shorts, Dallas, Raindance, Clermont-Ferrand, Indy Shorts, Alexandria, Aesthetica and BFI London Film Festival all appear somewhere within the journeys of these filmmakers.
Some have secured awards that directly strengthen their Academy campaigns; others have accumulated recognition and visibility through major international selections.
Echoes confronts buried childhood trauma; Vultures explores desperation and moral compromise; Never Give Up!examines migration through a child’s experience; and The Catcher transforms loneliness into surrealism. Meeting Your Maker tackles existential crisis through dark comedy, while I Am the Prize interrogates masculinity and influence.
Life Goes On finds humour and humanity in mortality, Magid / Zafar explores identity and expectation, Jazz Infernalcombines music, migration and grief, while I Will Be Alright returns to urgent questions surrounding borders and displacement.
There is no single route from the festival circuit to an Academy nomination — just as there is no single formula for an Oscar-worthy short.
But as the journey towards the 99th Academy Awards continues, these are ten live-action shorts worth keeping firmly on the radar.
Sally Brown
