Documentary Short Shortlist Predictions for the 98th Academy Awards

Shortlist announcements are just a couple weeks away and here at ShortStick we are doing what many trades have deemed impossible and are throwing out some predictions for the documentary short shortlists. Over the last 2 years we have done predictions, documentary short has been our most successful category going 10/15 two years ago and 9/15 last year. Documentary short is the category we take the most formulaic approach to. Prominent distribution, previous nominations and precursors such as Critics Choice Documentary Awards, Cimema Eye Honors and DOC NYC List matter a lot. Statistically it is rare that a short will make the shortlist with one, if not multiple of these. We have kept those factors in mind as we have selected the 15 that might make the shortlist as well as 10 other major contenders. Follow along with our podcast below as we discuss our predictions.

1) All The Empty Rooms, dir. Joshua Seftel

Podcast Timestamp: 02:00

In a short that is sure to bring tears to your eyes, All The Empty Rooms enters the Oscar race as a favourite in the category. The short is directed by Joshua Seftel, a long-time documentarian, more recently known for his Oscar-nominated short film Stranger at the Gate. In addition, All The Empty Rooms has no shortage of big names attached to it, with distribution from Netflix and major executive producers in Adam McKay and Kim Magnusson. It has the ever important designation of being nominated for Best Documentary Short at Cinema Eye Honors and the Critics Choice Documentary Awards as well as making the DOC NYC shortlist. 

All The Empty Rooms follows Steve Hartman on his seven-year long project with photographer Lou Bopp to capture the empty bedrooms of children killed in school shootings across America. Seftel and Hartman show tremendous restraint in telling the stories of these children. They never stray away from the heart of healing. They allow a portrait of the children and their innocence to be shown and the parents a moment to heal. Never once is a shooters name said and revealed, giving all the power to the victim and no voice to the evil that committed the act. All The Empty Rooms excels at using show not tell filmmaking. The short doesn’t allow for any solution or political debate on the issue because when you are shining a light on these kids, it would only take away from the project and mission. 

2) The Devil is Busy, dirs. Christalyn Hampton, Geeta Gandbhir

Podcast Timestamp: 04:05

In the wake of Roe v. Wade the tension is higher than ever when it comes to reproductive rights in the USA. While a lot of the news reporting for us on the outside looking in focuses on the legal and political impact, the effects in practice are much harder to comprehend. This film flips that around and puts the focus on the people fighting tooth and nail to provide healthcare within the constraints of the ever changing laws. As hard of a watch as this is, we need to see it now more than ever. We need to support the humanity of people providing healthcare against all odds and we need to put pressure in whichever way possible to recover the right to your own body which has been lost in recent years. The Devil is Busy also has the golden trio of precursors of being nominated for Best Documentary Short at Cinema Eye Honors and the Critics Choice Documentary Awards as well as making the DOC NYC shortlist. In the last four years no film with that same resume has ever missed the shortlist.

3) All The Walls Came Down, dir. Ondi Timoner

Podcast Timestamp: 06:25

All The Walls Came Down is a story that is sure to hit close to home for many members of the Academy. It was just last year around this time that forest fires were raging in LA, destroying many homes in their wake. Many members of the film industry lost their homes, including director Ondi Timoner. In All The Walls Came Down Ondi explores the devastation of the community on a very personal level. It is a harrowing reminder of climate catastrophe, the displacement it causes and how ill-prepared we are as a society to deal with the repercussions. This short also takes a look at how a community can come together to fight the powers-at-be and demand a path forward for those effected. All The Walls Came Down is a member of the 2025 DOC NYC list and will be distributed by LA Times.

4) Classroom 4, dir. Eden Wurmfeld

Podcast Timestamp: 09:10

In Classroom 4 an award-winning History professor named Reiko Hillyer teaches a course on the history of crime and punishment in the US at the prison to half-incarcerated and half-free students. Professor Hillyer does an amazing job throughout this short facilitating the conversation between the incarcerated and free students as both groups of students learn and grow together. With a semester full of footage Director Eden Wurmfeld lets the emotional moments shine through as the students learn to open up to each other. Classroom 4 has had a very successful festival run winning best documentary short at both Aspen Shortfest and LA Shorts and is distributed as part of PBS' POV Shorts.

5) Saving Superman, dirs. Adam Oppenheim, Samuel-Ali Mirpoorian

Podcast Timestamp: 10:30

Saving Superman follows the Chicago suburb Glen Ellyn’s very own Superman, resident Jonathan Charbonneau who is a 57 year old man with ASD (autism spectrum disorder), as his living circumstances are threatened by a new landlord. Director Sam Mirpoorian has been steadily building momentum since his student film Sonnie back in 2021 which had a successful festival run in the 2020/2021 season. In 2023 he gave us the follow up Safe Place which saw similar success in its festival run and now teaming up with director and cinematographer Adam Oppenheim to give us the juggernaut that is Saving Superman. With over 10 wins so far, most notably the Critics' Choice Documentary Award for Best Short Documentary, it recently picked up Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser as an executive producer.

6) Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud, dirs. Brent Renaud, Craig Renaud

Podcast Timestamp: 12:30

The late great Brent Renaud was a fearless documentary filmmaker who, in collaboration with his brother Craig, travelled to some of the most dangerous war torn places on earth in an effort to document and share the atrocities from a humanistic point of view. Brent was the first American journalist killed by Russian soldiers while reporting on the war in Ukraine. Using Brent’s own footage, Craig pieces together a lifetime of achievements leading up to the fatal moment, and takes us as viewers along in the aftermath as a way to honor his brother's life work. Distributed by HBO, the documentary made a big impact at this year's SXSW festival where it took home a win in the audience award alongside a nomination for the Grand Jury Award for best documentary short.

7) Children No More: Were and Are Gone, dir. Hilla Medalia

Podcast Timestamp: 15:30

Children No More shows the pure power and impact that an activist group can have, even in silence. Set in Tel Aviv, we see a group come together to hold silent vigils in public, holding up photos of children who have fallen innocent victims in Gaza. Often met with public backlash, the people involved display huge amounts of patience and restraint, as they keep reminding us of the war's human cost. Director Hilla Medalia has had a long career of success in the industry in producing, writing and directing going all the way back to 2007 with her debut feature To Die in Jerusalem. With Children No More she is backed by industry titan Sheila Nevins who recently got the documentary short The ABCs of Book Banning a nomination in the 2024 Academy Awards.

8) Last Days on Lake Trinity, dir. Charlotte Cooley

Podcast Timestamp: 17:27

Lake Trinity is a trailer park in South Florida owned by the evangelical TV network Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), the world's largest Christian TV station. In it we see residents Laurie Laney, Nancy Fleishman and Nancy Sanderson as they scramble to find housing following TBN’s decision to evict the tenants and rebuild the area. With older Americans accounting for the fastest-growing age group experiencing homelessness, this documentary is likely to resonate with voters across the US. Director Charlotte Cooley has had a solid run hitting important festivals such as Telluride and DOC NYC, landing the film distribution with The New Yorker.

9) Country Doctor, dirs. Shari Cookson, Nick Doob

Podcast Timestamp: 19:55

Directed by Emmy winners Shari Cookson and Nick Doob, Country Doctor, which was filmed over three years, follows Dr. James Graham in Fairfax, Oklahoma (population 1,263). Dr. Graham has spent over 40 years dispatching medicine, comfort, and wisdom to his patients as he fights to provide adequate healthcare in the community as hospitals in rural America are going bankrupt. Distributed by Documentary powerhouse HBO Documentary, Country Doctor is an alarming look into the rural healthcare crisis that is crippling America, but Country Doctor is a feel-good movie about a serious topic.

10) The Breakthrough Group, dir. Ben Rekhi

Podcast Timestamp: 23:03

The Other Side Academy is a Salt Lake City Addiction Recovery Program with a higher-than-average success rate, where participants pay with work and commitment, premiering sustainable change over short-term rehab. In Ben Rekhi’s documentary we see the ins and outs of the program, focused around the executive director Dave Durocher who recovered after spending close to 30 years in and out of prison. It is an unpolished look at the work it takes, showing us both successes and failures of the program without excuses. It is produced by Undine Buka together with industry giant Douglas Blush who were recently joined by Sing Sing star Clarence Maclin as an executive producer.

11) Heartbeat dirs. Jay Rosenblatt, Stephanie Rapp

Podcast Timestamp: 25:40

Heartbeat is this year's entry by academy favorite Jay Rosenblatt who once again teams up with his partner Stephanie Rapp, this time to share a look back into what their relationship was like in the leadup to their first child over 25 years ago. Similar to the couple's 2023 Academy Award nominee How Do You Measure a Year?, the documentary features clips from their home footage edited together to form the narrative base of the story, which follows their complicated journey towards parenthood. With his first nomination for When We Were Bullies in 2022, Jay has a chance to go for his third nomination this decade with this documentary.

12) Sallie's Ashes, dir. Brennan Robideaux

Podcast Timestamp: 27:50

In this documentary director Brennan Robideaux covers the story of the titular Sarah “Sallie” Smith, an 80-year-old resident of Fairhope Alabama, as she battles not only terminal lung cancer but also the Alabama Power company and their mishandling of toxic waste. Sallie teams up with fellow Alabama grandmas Diane Thomas and Savan Wilson to form the Coal Ash Action Group, with a mission to convince the corporation to correctly manage their toxic waste before it leaks out into the group's beloved Mobile Bay. With a story packed full of heart and a coveted Critics' Choice Documentary Award nomination it is sure to resonate with voters.

13) Fiddler on the Moon: Judaism in Space, dirs. Jeremy Newberger, Daniel A. Miller, Seth Kramer

Podcast Timestamp: 31:13

Fiddler on the Moon: Judaism in Space isn't your average documentary short on space. This short takes a deep dive into the depths of practicing Judaism and how to observe the Sabbath in a place where the concept of time seems to disappear. Fiddler on the Moon: Judaism in Space is filled with informative interviews from astronauts and other well-known personalities like Neil deGrasse Tyson. Paired with a Critics Choice Documentary Award nomination (a very telling precursor of what may shortlist), Fiddler on the Moon: Judaism in Space is one to keep an eye out on to make the shortlists this year.

14) Chasing Time, dirs. Sarah Keo, Jeff Orlowski

Podcast Timestamp: 32:01

After bringing some of the first and most striking visual evidence of our changing planet to the fore through the groundbreaking study of melting glaciers, photographer James Balog returns to Iceland to close the last chapter of his life's work, in directors Sarah Keo and Jeff Orlowski-Yang’s spiritual sequel to the feature documentary Chasing Ice, which was nominated for an Oscar in 2013 (Best Original Song, for J. Ralph’s “Before My Time”). Boasting incredibly beautiful cinematography, as well as an urgent climate message that voters would feel good about promoting, Chasing Time brings an emotional conclusion to Balog’s story.

15) Shanti Rides Shotgun, dir. Charles Frank

Podcast Timestamp: 34:30

“This wheel is your bitch. You have to learn it.”

These are the wise words of legendary New York City driving instructor Shanti.  In the chaos of NYC, Shanti is definitely someone you want by your side, riding shotgun. When one of her students asks “What is this guy doing?” while driving, Shanti replies from the passenger seat, “He’s a fucking asshole.” Shanti has no desire to keep things “professional” as she curses at anyone driving poorly around her students and even the “shitty ass road” itself. But that’s precisely what makes her so endearing. She is not only there as a driving instructor, but acts as a friend in the passenger seat as she instructs her student to  “Go to Dunkin” and “get me some coffee before I die.” Shanti’s uncouth methods clearly work as her students over the past 30 years have a 99% pass rate.  Shanti Rides Shotgun was nominated for a Critics Choice Documentary Award and is produced by Daniel Lombroso of Outerboro Films.

Honourable Mentions:

Podcast Timestamp: 37:00

Arctic Alchemy, dirs. Zeppelin Zeerip, Colin Arisman

Carol & Joy, dir. Nathan Silver

Maybe It's Just The Rain, dir. Reina Bonta

Songs of Black Folk, dirs. Justin Emeka, Haley Watson

Voices From The Abyss, dirs. Irving Serrano, Victor Rejon

The Ban, dir. Roisin Agnew

Tides of Life, dir. Tatiana McCabe

Masaka Kids, A Rhythm Within, dirs. David Vieira Lopez, Moses Bwayo

Exodus, dir. Nimco Sheikhaden

The Reality of Hope, dir. Joe Hunting

Alice, dir. Gabriel Novis