2019 Oscar Nominated Shorts: Documentary Program B

For the 14th consecutive year, Shorts HD and Magnolia Pictures present the Oscar-Nominated Documentary Short Films.

With all three categories offered – Animated, Live Action and Documentary – this is your annual chance to predict the winners (and have the edge in your Oscar pool)! A perennial hit with audiences around the country and the world, don’t miss this year’s selection of shorts. The Academy Awards take place Sunday, Feb. 24th.

Lifeboat – Skye Fitzgerald and Bryn Mooser, USA, 40 minutes

Volunteers from a German non-profit risk the waves of the Mediterranean to pluck refugees from sinking rafts pushing off from Libya in the middle of the night. Lifeboat puts a human face on one of the world’s greatest contemporary, global crises and provides a spark of hope surrounding how civil society can intervene in the refugee crisis in a meaningful way.

A Night at the Garden – Marshall Curry, USA, 7 minutes

In 1939, 20,000 Americans rallied in New York’s Madison Square Garden to celebrate the rise of Nazism – an event largely forgotten from American history. A Night at the Garden, made entirely from archival footage filmed that night, transports audiences to this chilling gathering and shines a light on the power of demagoguery and anti-Semitism in the United States.

PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. – Rayka Zahtabchi and Melissa Berton, India, 26 minutes

In a rural village outside Delhi, India, women lead a quiet revolution. They fight against the deeply rooted stigma of menstruation. “PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE.” — a documentary short directed by Rayka Zehtabchi — tells their story.

For generations, these women didn’t have access to pads, which lead to health problems and girls missing school or dropping out entirely. But when a sanitary pad machine is installed in the village, the women learn to manufacture and market their own pads, empowering the women of their community. They name their brand “FLY,” because they want women “to soar.” Their flight is, in part, enabled by the work of high school girls half a world away, in California, who raised the initial money for the machine and began a non-profit called “The Pad Project.”