Oscars 2024 Predictions: Who will win the Best Documentary Short Film?

A still from the Oscar-nominated documentary short film 'The Last Repair Shop'.

Last year, in a first ever historic moment, India brought home the Oscars for the Best Documentary Short Film for the heart-warming docu short The Elephant Whisperers about Bomman and Bellie, the mahout couple in Tamil Nadu's Mudumalai Tiger Reserve, directed by Karthiki Gonsalves and produced by Guneet Monga. This year’s nominations also present legitimate and simple stories that are hopeful and impactful even for the documentary-averse viewer. This year, the standout documentary short is The Last Repair Shop, a 40-minute short directed by Ben Proudfoot and produced by Kris Bowers, skillfully combines individual stories with a universal message. It focuses on the relationship between young music students in Los Angeles Unified School District and the dedicated craftspeople who repair their over 80,000 instruments at no cost. The film can be watched on YouTube. A heartwarming film but also a very American film that might bag the top prize.

The other nominees include The ABCs of Book Banning, directed by Sheila Nevins and produced by Trish Adlesic, about the very important subject of banning books from school libraries to keep pertinent information about how the world works away from students, but somewhere it fails in executing the gravitas of the far-reaching repercussions of that act, with mere pull quotes from banned books as adornments. How children and young minds are actually impacted by such book banning and what they turn into as they grow under such “prevalent tactic” would have made for a gripping documentary but, unfortunately, is beyond the scope of this film.

The Barber of Little Rock, directed by John Hoffman and produced by Christine Turner, a streaming documentary from The New Yorker, follows Arkansas barber Arlo Washington as he prepares to open the next branch of his non-profit CDFI (community development financial institution), People Trust.

Island in Between, directed by Taiwanese filmmaker S Leo Chiang and produced by Jean Tsien, is a fascinating but emotionally distant/cold look at the perils of propaganda by focusing on the island of Kinmen, over which there has been a historical tussle between China and Taiwan.

And Nai Nai & Wài Pó, directed by Sean Wang and produced by Sam Davis, is the heart-melting story of Wang’s two grandmothers: Chang Li Hua, his 83-year-old maternal grandma, and Yi Yan Feu, his 94-year-old paternal nan. Yi Yan and Chang Li live together and spend their days exercising, reading the newspaper, singing, looking through old photo albums, and farting!