By Sarah Chaisson-Warner
There were a lot of firsts this year at the Academy Awards, from Autumn Durald Akupaw being the first woman and first black person to win in the Cinematography category to Huntr/X being the first Kpop group to be nominated for and win the Best Original Song category. And in the shorts category, there was a rare tie for the Best Live Action Short Film at the Academy Awards.
Each year, the Academy nominates and awards narrative short films in two categories – Best Live Action and Best Animated. To be considered for the narrative categories in the Academy Awards, a live-action short film must be 40 minutes or less (including the credits) and must have screened in a commercial theater in one of the six qualifying metro areas for at least seven days. Qualifying metro areas for 2026 were Los Angeles County, New York City, The Bay Area, Chicago, Atlanta, and Dallas-Fort Worth. A film can also qualify if it wins an eligible award at a qualifying film festival.
Last month, “The Singers” and “Two People Exchanging Saliva” tied for the Best Live Action category, and “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” took home the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film. Let’s look at the journey each of these films took to land themselves on the Oscar stage.
“THE SINGERS”
“The Singers,” directed by Sam A. Davis and produced by Jack Piatt, is an 18-minute musical drama. The film centers around themes of vulnerability and connection when a group of downtrodden men engages in an impromptu sing-off in a bar. An adaptation of a 19th-century short story by Ivan Turgenev, “The Singers” explores connection and vulnerability in a dive bar, featuring viral singing talents, and is currently available on Netflix.
Davis wasn’t immediately drawn to the original short story, noting that it was “dense” and “lulled me to sleep a couple of times.” But once he got to the climax of the story, he began to see how it could take shape through film.
“There’s a turning point where the last thing that you could expect to happen happens, which is this impromptu sing-off and this moment of connection between this group of sort of lonely men.” -Sam A. Davis, director
The film was shot on 35mm, and featured a wide array of first-time actors and singers discovered on social media platforms, including TikTok and YouTube. All of the music was recorded live on the set.
The film had its world premiere at SXSW and won the 2025 Best Short Film at the Bowery Film Festival. It went on to win another 34 awards in approximately 50 festival appearances.
“TWO PEOPLE EXCHANGING SALIVA”
The second short film to win the Best Live Action Oscar for short films was “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh. The French-language film was released in 2024 in the United States and runs for 36 minutes. Featuring veteran actors Zar Amir and Luana Bajrami, the film was executive produced by Isabelle Huppert and American actress Julianne Moore.
The short looks largely at themes of repression, desire, and surveillance against an absurdist premise – in this society, kissing is punishable by death, and transactions are completed through slaps to the face. In “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” a compulsive shopper becomes fascinated with and develops a close relationship with a young salesgirl, much to the chagrin of a jealous colleague.
The writers were inspired by the alarming realities unfolding around the world and extremist movements taking hold.
“In Iran, we were inspired by the courage of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, while also shocked by related news stories, such as an 18-year-old couple sentenced to ten years in prison for dancing in front of Tehran’s Freedom Tower, and countless young women being shot, abducted, or killed for refusing to wear a headscarf. The extremity and absurdity of these events—both at home and abroad—felt almost surreal, as if they belonged in the world of a film rather than reality.
Since then, the sense of absurdity in the real world has only intensified. Rising autocracies, the erosion of civil liberties, and increasing restrictions on personal freedoms in countries around the globe—from the murders of protesters in Iran to the abduction of people by ICE in the United States—make it feel as though the world is moving backward rather than forward.” –Natalie Musteata & Alexandre Singh, writer/directors
The film premiered in September 2024 at the Telluride Film Festival at “Great Expectations,” a program curated by Barry Jenkins. It went on to win several prizes, including at AFI Fest, Out on FILM LGBTQ+ Film Festival, and Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival. It was also nominated for the 2026 Cesar for Best Short Fiction Film. All in all, it showed at over 70 festivals in 21 countries and garnered over 20 awards.
“THE GIRL WHO CRIED PEARLS”
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls,” directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, is a stop-motion animation film centering on a poor young boy who meets and falls in love with a girl with a secret – she cries pearls at night. Inspired by a simple accident on the set of another short film, where a prop necklace broke and scattered pearls everywhere, the short film also draws inspiration from Hans Christian Andersen tales and looks at themes of grief, greed, and wickedness.
This was a marked shift from the duo’s previous work, which largely engaged in experimental film and tactics.
“This was our first story completely dependent on story. We joked that we usually make experimental films and the experiment this time was doing something traditional. For the most part, we’ve been exploring the worlds of dream logic and Dadaist accidents that create story in a kind of symbolistic way, which we try to curate and control. Here, the trick was to tell a very specific, concise story. If you don’t understand the two or three crucial moments, it probably means nothing.” -Maciek Szczerbowski, co-director (Variety)
“The Girl Who Cried Pearls” was released in 2025 and premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and is available with both English narration and French narration. After premiering at Annecy, it went on to screen at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it won Best Canadian Short Film.
ENTER THE SHORT FILM FUND
Do you have the next Oscar-winning short film? Enter our Short Film Fund! The Short Film Fund offers an opportunity for emerging screenwriters and filmmakers to receive much-needed financial support to get their work produced and distributed. Our partnerships with ARRI Rental, Oscar-nominated producer Maria Gracia Turgeon, and Tribeca short film programmer Kimberley Browning elevate the films that come through our Fund with free camera equipment, mentorship, and film festival strategy.
The Short Film Fund accepts submissions from writers, directors, and producers from around the world for narrative short films (live-action & animation), including proof-of-concept shorts for TV series and features. Enter today!
After 15 years of working in state and national politics, Sarah Chaisson-Warner is moving into the entertainment industry. As the former Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Athena Magazine for Girls, Sarah is now focusing her passion for creative arts through screenwriting. Many of her feature-length scripts focus on the often unseen experiences of gay women throughout American History, and she is also currently writing a sci-fi TV series and a family Christmas script.
