ShortsTV’s ‘Oscar Nominated Short Films’ are Box Office Hit
Written on 17th Mar 2022.
British short film company takes Oscar® shorts – including UK nominees – to North American cinemas ahead of awards ceremony – grossing $1.5m since opening on February 25th
LONDON & LOS ANGELES, March 17, 2022 – ShortsTV, the global short film network, announces that its ‘Oscar® Nominated Short Films’ theatrical release opened in cinemas across the US and Canada on February 25th, and is a box office hit, grossing $1.5m in its first three weeks.
In its 17th year, the cinema presentation of the Live Action, Animation and Documentary short film nominees for this year’s Academy Awards® opened in over 350 cinemas across 100+ locations including New York and Los Angeles.
North American audiences are flocking to watch the Oscar® hopefuls including British Live Action nominee ‘The Long Goodbye’, starring Emmy award winning British actor Riz Ahmed, and ‘Robin Robin’, a charming animated short from Aardman Animations, the British studio behind ‘Wallace and Gromit’ and ‘Chicken Run’.
“We’re thrilled to be back in theatres with the Oscar® Nominated Short Films, and clearly audiences are thrilled to have us back. Our grosses put this year’s Oscar® Nominated Short Films – our 17th consecutive release – on course to surpass a number of other feature films nominated for Academy Awards®”, said ShortsTV CEO and Founder Carter Pilcher. “With that kind of love from audiences and a theatrical footprint that puts us in every major market across the US, the Academy® needs to increase – not decrease – the attention the short film nominees receive on the Telecast”, continued Mr Pilcher.
This is the only opportunity for audiences to see the short film nominees in cinemas before the Academy Awards® ceremony on March 27, 2022.
Nominations for the 94th Academy Awards® were announced on February 8, 2022. Watch the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/678295462/7a10ce4892.
For more information, please visit http://shorts.tv/theoscarshorts/. A full list of this year’s nominated short films can be found in the appendix below.
About ShortsTV
ShortsTV is the first and most popular worldwide channel and network dedicated to short films. The channel is available in over 130 million homes across the US, India, Latin America, Europe and more. With over 13,000 titles, ShortsTV has the world’s largest catalogue of quality short film offerings, including award-winning and star-studded live action, animated and documentary shorts. From content offerings and various distribution/licensing deals to presenting the Oscar Nominated Short Film releases for 17 years, ShortsTV seeks to amplify the voices of filmmakers around the world. As the leading advocate for short filmmakers globally, ShortsTV is also proud to be the initial and vital steppingstone for short film creators at the beginning of the content development funnel.
ShortsTV is owned by Shorts International Ltd, is headquartered in London, England and is represented in the US by Shorts Entertainment Networks, a wholly owned subsidiary located in Los Angeles. The company is led by Chief Executive Carter Pilcher and is majority owned by Shorts Entertainment Holdings with AMC Networks a significant minority shareholder.
For more information, please visit: https://shorts.tv/en/corporate.
UK PR CONTACT
Ben Simons / Kendall Hill, Vigo Consulting, [email protected]
APPENDIX
LIVE ACTION SHORT FILM NOMINEES
ALA KACHUU – TAKE AND RUN (2020)
Director: Maria Brendle
Synopsis: Sezim, 19 years old, wants to fulfill her dream of studying in the Kyrgyz capital when she gets kidnapped by a group of young men and taken to the hinterland. There, she’s forced to marry a stranger. If she refuses the marriage, she is threatened with social stigmatization and exclusion. Torn between her desire for freedom and the constraints of Kyrgyz culture, Sezim desperately seeks a way out.
Country of Origin: Switzerland
ON MY MIND (2021)
Director: Martin Strange-Hansen
Synopsis: Henrik wants to sing a song for his wife. It has to be today, it has to be now. It’s a question of life, death and karaoke.
Country of Origin: Denmark
PLEASE HOLD (2020)
Director: KD Davila
Synopsis: In the not-so-distant future, MATEO (20s, Latino) is arrested by a police drone without explanation. Finding himself locked in a fully automated jail with no means of recourse, Mateo realizes he’s fallen through some kind of crack in the system. To get out alive he’ll have to go head-to-head with the labyrinthine, computerized bureaucracy of the privatized American justice system, in search of an actual human being who can set things right.
Country of Origin: USA
THE DRESS (2020)
Director: Tadeusz Lysiak
Synopsis: Lust, sexuality and physicality. These are the deepest desires virgin Julia suppresses while working at a wayside motel. That is until she crosses paths with a handsome truck driver, who soon becomes the object of her fantasies…
Country of Origin: Poland
THE LONG GOODBYE (2020)
Director: Aneil Karia
Synopsis: Riz and his family are in the middle of preparing a wedding celebration when the events unfolding in the outside world arrive suddenly on their doorstep. The result is a devastating and visceral feat of filmmaking, and a poignant poetic cry from the heart.
Country of Origin: UK
ANIMATED SHORT FILM NOMINEES
AFFAIRS OF THE ART (2021)
Director: Joanna Quinn
Synopsis: With Affairs of the Art, director Joanna Quinn and producer/screenwriter Les Mills continue the series of beloved, hilarious and award-winning animated UK films starring Beryl, a 59-year-old factory worker who’s obsessed with drawing and determined to become a hyper-futurist artiste. We also meet her grown son, Colin, a techno geek, her husband, Ifor, now Beryl’s model and muse, and her sister, Beverly, a fanatical narcissist living in LA. Affairs of the Art provides glimpses into Beryl’s, Beverly’s and Colin’s peculiar childhoods, and we see that obsession is in this family’s DNA. The first co-production between Beryl Productions International and the National Film Board of Canada, Affairs of the Art features Quinn’s signature hand-drawn animation with attitude and Mills’ raucously humorous scenarios, in an endearing romp through one family’s eccentric addictions.
Country of Origin: UK/Canada
BESTIA (2021)
Director: Hugo Covarrubias
Synopsis: Inspired by real events, Bestia enters the life of a secret police agent in the military dictatorship in Chile. The relationship with her dog, her body, her fears and frustrations, reveal a macabre fracture in her mind and a country.
Country of Origin: Chile
BOXBALLET (2021)
Director: Anton Dyakov
Synopsis: Delicate ballerina Olya meets Evgeny, a rough boxer who personifies “strong but silent.” With very different lives and worldviews, will they be brave enough to embrace their feelings? Can two fragile souls hang on to each other despite the world’s cruelty?
Country of Origin: Russia
ROBIN ROBIN (2021)
Director: Daniel Ojari, Michael Please
Synopsis: ROBIN ROBIN, an Aardman Production is the tale of a small bird with a very big heart. After a shaky nativity of her own – her unhatched egg falls out of the nest and into a rubbish dumpster – she comes out of her shell, in more ways than one, and is adopted by a loving family of mice burglars. More beak and feathers than fur, tail and ears, more cluck and klutz than tip-toe and stealth, she is nonetheless beloved by her adopted family, a Dad Mouse and four siblings.
As she grows up, though, her differences make her something of a liability, especially when the family take her on furtive food raids to the houses of the humans (pronounced ‘Who-mans’) in the dead of night. Neither fully bird, nor fully mouse, Robin embarks on a food heist of her own to prove herself worthy of her family and also, hopefully, to bring them back a Christmas sandwich. Along the way, she encounters a curmudgeonly magpie who has a house full of glittery things that he’s stolen and, as it turns out, an unlikely heart of gold. He has set that heart on stealing the sparkling star from the top of a local who-man family’s Christmas tree. And who better to help him than the eternally optimistic Robin herself. The adventure brings them face-to-terrifying-face with a menacing, yet very cool Cat, who has a warm place for birds and mice alike: her tummy. Can they survive? Can they bring home the sandwich and the star? And, most of all, can Robin discover, and learn to love, who she really is, delighting her family and earning her wings in the process?
Country of Origin: UK
THE WINDSHIELD WIPER (2021)
Director: Alberto Mielgo
Synopsis: Inside a cafe while smoking a whole pack of cigarettes, a man poses an ambitious question: “What is Love?”. A collection of vignettes and situations will lead the man to the desired conclusion.
Country of Origin: Spain
DOCUMENTARY SHORT FILM NOMINEES
AUDIBLE (2020)
Director: Matt Ogens
Synopsis: AUDIBLE is a cinematic and immersive coming of age documentary following Maryland School for the Deaf high school athlete Amaree McKenstry and his close friends as they face the pressures of senior year and grappling with the realities of venturing off into the hearing world. Amaree and his teammates take out their frustrations on the football field as they battle to protect an unprecedented winning streak, while coming to terms with the tragic loss of a close friend. This is a story about kids who stand up to adversity. They face conflict, but approach the future with hope – shouting to the world that they exist and they matter.
Country of Origin: USA
LEAD ME HOME (2020)
Director: Pedro Kos, Jon Shenk
Synopsis: 500,000 Americans experience homelessness every night. LEAD ME HOME is a documentary short by Jon Shenk and Pedro Kos that captures the experience from multiple perspectives. This immersive, cinematic film personalizes the overwhelming issue by telling the real-life stories of those going through it as a first step toward challenging uninformed attitudes and outmoded policies and gives the audience a rare, in-depth look at the scale, scope and diversity of unsheltered America today.
Country of Origin: USA
THE QUEEN OF BASKETBALL (2021)
Director: Ben Proudfoot
Synopsis: She is one of the greatest living women’s basketball players. 3 national trophies. Scored the first basket in women’s Olympic basketball at the ‘76 Olympics. Drafted to the NBA. But have you ever heard of Lusia Harris?
Country of Origin: USA
THREE SONGS FOR BENAZIR (2021)
Director: Gulistan Mirzaei, Elizabeth Mirzaei
Synopsis: The story of Shaista, a young man who – newly married to Benazir and living in a displacement camp in Kabul – struggles to balance his dreams of being the first from his tribe to join the Afghan National Army with the responsibilities of starting a family. Gulistan and Elizabeth Mirzaei’s remarkable access sheds light on the experience of modern-day Afghans who live, love, and seek space for themselves amid constant instability. Nominated for the 15th Annual Cinema Eye Honors and winner of six jury awards, including Best Short at Full Frame.
Country of Origin: Afghanistan
WHEN WE WERE BULLIES (2021)
Director: Jay Rosenblatt
Synopsis: A mind-boggling coincidence leads the filmmaker to track down his fifth grade class and fifth grade teacher to examine their memory of and complicity in a bullying incident 50 years ago.
Country of Origin: Germany/USA