2025 Oscars: Best Live Action Short Predictions
- Nominations voting for the 97th Oscars will take place from January 8-17, 2025, with the official nominations announced on January 23, 2025.
Nominations voting is from January 8-17, 2025, with official Oscar nominations announced January 23, 2025. Final voting is February 11-18, 2025. And finally, the 97th Oscars telecast will be broadcast on Sunday, March 2 and air live on ABC at 7:00 p.m. ET/ 4:00 p.m. PT. We update our picks through awards season, so keep checking IndieWire for all our 2025 Oscar predictions .
The State of the Race
Given everything going on in America, a place where most Academy members are based, it does make sense for people to vote for “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” to win the Oscar just by just looking at the title alone. A winner at both Cannes and the European Film Awards, the Croatian short is a snapshot of the 1990s genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Though the audience sees minimal violence, it remains a discomfiting watch.
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However, content wise, “A Lien” is the nominee with the most political commentary about the United States specifically. Directed by brothers David Cutler-Kreutz and Sam Cutler-Kreutz, and executive produced by Oscar-winning filmmaker Adam McKay, the film follows a husband and wife trying to validate the former’s immigration status, and being ambushed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. That alone is harrowing, but the film also shares that the plot comes straight from the ICE playbook in real life.
While both those aforementioned nominees align with the reputation the Best Live Action Short has for honoring particularly bleak films, the past two winners of the category “An Irish Goodbye” and “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” have been more joyful or optimistic. Indian short “Anuja,” from filmmakers Adam J. Graves and Suchitra Mattai, falls more on that end, even though the circumstances of the title character are difficult. The film was acquired by Netflix, and boasts Mindy Kaling, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, and Oscar winner Guneet Monga as executive producers, so it is running a pretty notable campaign.
“I’m Not a Robot,” a Dutch film, shares DNA with current horror hit “Companion,” so the film is definitely entertaining, and hits on the industry’s complex relationship with technology right now, but has not gotten the same push. It is one of the most accessible films to the general public though, available on The New Yorker’s YouTube channel.
“The Last Ranger” is more traditionally dramatic, and has been an underdog the whole way, so no one should count it out, but the other nominees in the category have the edge ultimately, just by virtue of feeling more timely.
Nominees are listed in order of likelihood to win.
“The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent”
“Anuja”
“A Lien”
“I’m Not a Robot”
“The Last Ranger”
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