A day in an abortion clinic; children killed in Gaza; children killed in school shootings in America; the life and death of a war photojournalist; donkeys in the desert. These are the subjects of the five documentary shorts nominated this year for Academy Awards, which will be shown together in movie theaters nationwide starting on Friday, as part of a 2026 Oscar Nominated Short Films program that also includes presentations of the nominated live action and animated short films.
Below is my take on the documentaries, which I found less successful as a whole than the films in the two other categories. I include trailers, and if the films are currently available online.
All The Empty Rooms
Steve Hartman, a CBS News correspondent mostly known for his “On the Road” segments, was first assigned to cover a school shooting in 1997. Since then such shootings in American have increased from 17 to 132 a year. He decided to cover the shootings in a unique way. With photographer Lou Bopp, he has spent seven years visiting the bedrooms of young people who were killed. The film chronicles their visit to four of them. The rooms are kept exactly they were before their children died, one parents says, because “as long as that room exists, she exists.” Several talk about wanting to preserve their child’s smell. We see brief home movies.
There are moving moments, but I’m left with questions. Why is this taking seven years? Why not do this for CBS? What will the final product look like? I wondered whether Hartman and Bopp had turn what was intended as a work of journalism into a kind of public service; we learn that they put the photographs of each room into an album embossed with the dead child’s name to give to each family.
Directed by Joshua Seftel. United States 33 minutes. Available on Netflix
Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud
Brent Renaud was the first American journalist killed by Russian soldiers after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although we offered some biography, including eulogies at his funeral, the film, put together by his brother, who worked alongside him for twenty years, is largely taken up with footage the two shot from war zones and regions struck by violence and disaster all over the world – Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti, Ukraine — and Chicago: Scenes of parents weeping for their dead children, maimed children, explosions, people crying out in hunger.
The film ends with a brief montage of a handful of the journalists killed in the line of duty; we’re told there have been more than 100 such casualties Renaud’s in 2022.
The film is clearly a tribute by a grieving brother, but the accumulation of misery and carnage, shorn of t context, starts to feel insensitive . A greater tribute to Renaud, and a better documentary, might have been to focus on several journalists who have been killed – or picked one story that the Renaud brothers worked on, and gone into depth with it, providing both footage and context.
Directed by Craig Renaud and Brent Renaud. United States. 38 minutes. Available on HBO Max and other platforms.
Children No More: “Were and Are Gone”
The film chronicles a public vigil in Israel organized by some Israeli women to protest the killing in Gaza, by silently holding up photographs of individual dead children (photographed when they were alive), with their names, the phrase “was and is no more” and the date they were killed. There is a scene of a strategy session, in which the organizers point out the need to be seen as working in alliance with those holding protest vigils for the hostages. “Let’s prove it’s possible to show compassion for all.” There are also brief scenes of angry outbursts by passersby.
Directed by Hilla Medalia. Israel. 36 minutes
The Devil Is Busy
A day in the life at the Feminist Center for Reproduction Liberation in Atlanta, Georgia, focusing on Tracii, the head of security, as she casts a wary eye on what she calls “our resident protesters,” while the staff try to adjust to the new restrictions on abortions in the state since the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade in 2022. Tracii, a deeply religious woman who begins and ends the long day with prayer, offers some pointed comments but also some candid reminiscences and regrets that deepen this documentary into something more than a defense of reproductive rights, although it’s clearly that.
Directed by Christalyn Hampton and Geeta Gandbhir. United States. 31 minutes. Available on HBO Max and other platforms.
Perfectly a Strangeness
Three donkeys walk by billion-dollar observatories in the desert. The cinematography is awesome, the whole enterprise oddly captivating but also just odd. I don’t see how this is a documentary.
Directed, written and produced by Alison McAlpine. Canada. 15 minutes.
