Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas’s One Small Step is nominated in the Best Animated Short category at this year’s Academy Awards.
As of this writing, the 91st Academy Awards are just a few days away. Fortunately, if you’re not caught up, Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour St.) and the Rio Theatre (1660 E. Broadway at Commercial) are both screening some of the nominated films. See below for more info (and click on theatre names for tickets).
Oscar Shorts 2019: Live Action and Animation—The Oscar Shorts are an annual tradition at VIFF Vancity Theatre. This year the Live Action nominees include two films by Canadian filmmakers, along with work from Spain, Ireland, and the USA. The live action shorts screen Fri Feb 22 at 1 p.m. and Feb. 23 at 1 p.m. Meanwhile, Animal Behaviour from local filmmakers Alison Snowden and David Fine, is in the running in the Best Animated Short category. You can catch it and the other nominees Feb. 23 at 11:15 a.m. (You can also watch Animal Behaviour at nfb.ca.)
Local filmmakers are represented at this year’s Academy Awards with the short film Animal Behaviour.
Roma—Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma is the Brief History of Time of this year’s Academy Awards; everyone talks about it, but no one’s seen it. (We kid, Alfonso. We kid.) Actually, Best Picture nominee is one of the most accessible on the list, since the Netflix-distributed film is available on that platform. If you want to see it on the big screen, though, Vancity is screening the film Feb 22 and Feb 23 at 3:15, 6 and 8:35 p.m. and on Feb 25 at 3:30 p.m. The film is also up for Best Actress, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Director, as well as Foreign Language Film. And it’s already won for Best Film of the Year, according to New York, LA, Chicago, San Franciso, and Toronto film critics societies, as well as the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
Free Solo—Sometimes we forget, there are Oscars for documentaries too. Up for Best Doc is Free Solo, about a rock climber, Alex Honnold, who attempts to do what no-one has done before: ascend free solo — by hand and without safety ropes — up the 3,000-foot cliff of El Capitan in California’s Yosemite National Park. The high-climbing film screens at the Rio Feb. 22 at 9:20 p.m.
Capernaum (Capharnaüm)—Another foreign-language best picture nom, this Lebanese film was one of the most popular films at last year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, where it scored 4.92 out of 5 in the audience ballot. It tells the story of a 12 year old boy who, having grown up in the slums of Beirut, decides to sue his parents for bringing him into such a world. It screens at the Rio Feb. 23 at 1 p.m.
Hale County This Morning, This Evening—Another Best Doc nom, this American film about black lives in Alabama screens Feb. 23 at 3:40 p.m. at the Rio. It won the 2018 Sundance Film Festival award for U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Creative Vision.
