Films

When Brazilian journalist Tatiana Merlino watched “The Secret Agent” — one of this year’s Oscar nominees for best picture — it felt like seeing scattered scenes from her own life.

As the movie follows Marcelo (played by Wagner Moura) — a professor fleeing from a vindictive businessman during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985), the story skims through old audio tapes and newspapers, reviewed by a researcher looking into how he died. Like her, Merlino also dug into the past to piece together how her uncle, Luiz Eduardo Merlino, a communist activist, was killed by the right-wing regime in 1971. Though it was initially reported as a suicide, the family soon found his corpse with torture marks in a morgue.

“It became necessary to fight for memory, truth, and justice, because these crimes committed by dictatorship agents weren’t punished at that time, and have not been to this day,” says the 49-year-old journalist, who first saw “The Secret Agent” in São Paulo, and made a career from investigating human rights abuses.

“When a country does not come to terms with its past,” she adds, “its ghosts resurface.”

Recent dictatorship-themed movies like “The Secret Agent” and “I’m Still Here,” which won the Oscar for best international film in 2025, were instant blockbusters back home in Brazil. While both films honor those who, like Merlino, still seek justice for the regime victims, their popularity also got boosted by the country’s zeitgeist.

To many Brazilians, these movies served as reminders of what could have been had former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, himself a retired Army captain and a dictatorship nostalgic, succeeded in his 2022 attempt at a coup d’etat.

On Jan. 8, 2023, encouraged by Bolsonaro, hundreds of vandals stormed into the Three Powers Plaza, a square in the country’s capital, Brasília, that gathers the congress, the supreme court and the presidential palace. Neither he nor the vandals accepted the 2022 election — won by the veteran leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, better known as “Lula.”

The uprising followed the same blueprint as the pro-Trump rioters behind the Jan. 6 insurrection in the United States. Although President Trump himself was federally prosecuted for election obstruction, the case was dismissed after his reelection in 2024.

Unlike the U.S., however, Brazil has charged, judged and arrested the conspirators — including Bolsonaro and members of his staff who participated in the coup plot.

“Bolsonaro doesn’t come from Mars,” said “The Secret Agent” star Wagner Moura to the L.A. Times in February. “He’s deeply grounded in the history of the country.”

In 1964, a U.S.-backed coup enacted a violent, 21-year autocracy run by the military, whose effects still resonate today, says Alessandra Gasparotto, a professor at the Federal University of Pelotas (UFPEL).

“It was a dictatorship that worked from a perspective of building certain legitimacy, keeping the congress functioning, but of course, after purging dissent,” explains the Brazilian historian.

“I’m Still Here,” for example, dramatizes the real-life quest of Eunice Paiva, a housewife whose husband Rubens Paiva, a former leftist congressman who had his tenure revoked after the coup, then disappeared in the hands of the military in 1971. To this day, his body still hasn’t been recovered.

In 2014, Bolsonaro, then just a congressman, spit on a bust of Paiva erected to honor his memory during the coup’s 50th anniversary in Congress.

“The cinema of all countries has the role of preserving memory, so if you take a look at the Holocaust, the American Civil War, or World War II movies, it has this role of almost an ally of history,” says writer Marcelo Rubens Paiva, son of Rubens Paiva and author of the book from which “I’m Still Here” is based. “There’s an old saying: History is the narrative of winners, while art is of the defeated.”

In the case of Brazil, the militaries who led the repressive apparatus of the dictatorship got away with torture and murder through a 1979 amnesty law. It was initially enacted to pardon alleged “political crimes” committed by the regime opposition and allow a transition to democracy — but it was also used to pardon the dictatorship’s human rights violations. Then, in the late 1980s, the military oversaw a slow, gradual shift to democracy, stepping down from power only in 1985.

“This new republic had more continuity than novelty, since many politicians who were central to the dictatorship moved to central roles in the democratic government,” explains Gasparotto. “That’s why they built this pact [to forgive the regime’s crimes].”

For that reason, these movies still feel contemporary. “The Secret Agent,” for example, blends past and future through the records analyzed by a researcher, while “I’m Still Here” highlights Eunice Paiva’s post-regime fight for the recognition of Rubens Paiva’s death; without any corpse to officialize his death, he was just deemed disappeared.

When Merlino watched the movie, for example, Eunice reminded her of her grandmother, Iracema Merlino.

“I’m the third generation of my family fighting for memory, truth and justice,” says Merlino. “It started with my grandmother, who passed away, then it was handed to my mother, who’s now very ill, then to me.”

Nowadays, she awaits trial for the third lawsuit attempt of the family to hold her uncle’s torturer, Col. Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, accountable — the two other cases against the accused were dismissed over the years.

Since Ustra’s death in 2015, the Merlino family is now suing his estate for reparations. Yet he still remains a hero to some; in 2016, while Bolsonaro was still a congressman, he shouted a dedication to the memory of the torturer during the voting of the impeachment of Brazil’s former President Dilma Rousseff — herself one of the victims of Ustra in the 1970s, but among the few who survived.

“These films make connections with the present because understanding the past is important for understanding today’s contradictions,” says Marcelo Rubens Paiva. “What happened before interferes in the conflicts a country lives in today.”

So if authoritarians like Bolsonaro don’t come out of the blue, the same goes for other autocratic leaders, like President Trump.

Although founded on democratic principles, the U.S. itself has a long, muddled history with the concept. The authoritarian turn the country is reckoning with is part of a long legacy of inequality that stemmed from the 246-year institution of slavery. Following its abolishment in 1865 came a near-centurylong period of tension marked by racial segregation that we now refer to as “Jim Crow.”

“With some exceptions, the South was governed by a then-segregationist Democrat party — with [rampant] electoral fraud, authoritarianism, use of local police for political repression, and no chance for opposition, even [by] moderates,” says Arthur Avila, a history professor at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in Brazil.

Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 ended segregation and granted voting rights to people of all races — signed by then-President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Southern Democrat who broke away from the party’s history to spearhead progressive domestic policy — the decades that followed were ridden with manipulations of the electoral system. For example gerrymandering, or the practice of manipulating electoral district boundaries to favor one political party, is an ongoing, albeit controversial tactic among both Democrats and Republicans.

President Trump himself was federally prosecuted for election obstruction. The indictment alleged that, upon losing the 2020 election, Trump conspired to overturn the results and manipulate the public by spreading false claims of election fraud on social media. It argued that this, in turn, stoked a mob of his supporters into leading the deadly Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol; but the case was dismissed upon his reelection in 2024.

In the lead-up to the midterm elections in November, Trump has pushed for federal control over elections, restrictions on mail-in voting and the addition of citizenship documents to vote, despite an existing federal law that already prohibits noncitizens from voting in U.S. elections. (He tried implementing the latter through an executive order in 2025, but it was permanently blocked by a federal court; a voter ID bill called the “SAVE America Act” is currently stalling in the Senate.)

“There’s a strong local authoritarian tradition in the U.S. that Trump himself feeds from,” says Avila.

Besides that, according to Avila, the country faces a growing “de-democratization” process from within. This shows in the rising control and dismantling of institutions by reactionary sectors — including efforts to block professional, educational and athletic programs promoting DEI, or diversity, equity and inclusion — from what many critics and scholars have cited as lingering resentment from desegregation, he says.

“We may see it as a slow authoritarian turn in North American politics that didn’t overturn the democratic regime yet,” Arthur considers. “But if this process goes on, and that’s a conjecture, in the next decade the U.S. may become a state of exception that keeps democratic appearances but has been stripped of any democracy’s substance whatsoever.”

As movies such as “The Secret Agent and “I’m Still Here” remind us, a great deal of maintaining a democracy has to do with keeping a good memory.

The BBC war drama depicts a fictional nuclear attack on Britain by Russia and its devastating aftermath – and was so disturbing it was banned from broadcast for two decades

In the face of escalating conflicts worldwide – from the intensifying US-Israel joint operation against Iran in the Middle East, Israel’s ongoing war on Gaza following Hamas’ October 2023 attack, to the four-year-long Russia-Ukraine war still in progress – it’s no exaggeration to say we’re witnessing a catastrophic level of global unrest.

Amidst this turmoil, the looming threat of nuclear warfare is ever-present. The aftermath of such a conflict would bring about unimaginable destruction and devastation – the fallout is too horrific to contemplate.

This chilling scenario was portrayed in a BBC documentary from 1965, a film so disturbing it was banned from television broadcast for two decades by the British Broadcasting Corporation itself.

At the time, the corporation justified its decision to prohibit the documentary, stating: “The effect of the film has been judged by the BBC to be too horrifying for the medium of broadcasting. It will, however, be shown to invited audiences..”

The controversial pseudo-documentary finally aired in Great Britain on 31 July 1985, twenty years after its initial scheduled screening date of 6 October 1965. This broadcast coincided with the week leading up to the 40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, reports the Express.

The War Game is currently available for free streaming on BBC iPlayer or can be bought for £5.99 on Amazon Prime Video.

Written, directed and produced by Peter Watkins for the BBC, The War Game depicted a fictional nuclear strike on Britain by the Soviets and its devastating consequences.

The docu-film’s official synopsis states: “In this British documentary, a hypothetical Chinese invasion of South Vietnam triggers a new world war between East and West. In the town of Rochester, Kent, the anticipation of a nuclear attack leads to mass evacuations.

When a stray missile actually explodes, the ensuing firestorm blinds all those who see it. It’s not long before the fabric of society is ripped apart owing to radiation poisoning, a lack of infrastructure and rioting for food and other necessities.”

On 13 April 1966, The War Game had its premiere at the National Film Theatre in London, where it screened until 3 May. Barred from broadcast, the 47-minute docu-drama subsequently appeared at numerous international film festivals, including Venice, where it secured the Special Prize.

The recognition continued – the prohibited BBC production went on to claim the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1967, alongside two BAFTAs for Best Short Film and the UN Award.

Boasting a near-flawless 93% approval rating on review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, The War Game has earned widespread acclaim from critics and viewers.

One reviewer commented on the docu-drama: “Nothing that you have heard or read can fully prepare you for Peter Watkins’ 1965 faux documentary on the aftermath of a nuclear attack on Great Britain.”

Another reviewer added: “One of the most disturbing, overwhelming, and downright important films ever produced.”

A third critic described it as essential viewing, noting: “It was produced by the British Broadcasting Corp. but never televised because it was felt its showing would be both horrifying and depressing. It is. It also is realistic, informative and shattering. It is a movie that everyone should see.”

Whilst one critic said: “Still packs a whallop. Will stick with you for life. Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” another commented on the nuclear war drama, “One of the most skillful documentary films ever made.”

Viewer reactions mirror this sentiment, with one audience member writing in an extensive review: “The War Game, although created as a TV movie for the BBC for the 20th anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is easily the one of the most disturbing movies I have ever seen, on par only with Gus van Sant’s “Elephant. ” It accurately portrays the effects and aftermath of a nuclear attack and uses a handheld documentary style that makes everything chillingly real.

“There were several times during the film when I had to remind myself that Britain had never suffered a nuclear attack and the footage I was looking at was not real. There are very few films that have left me in the state that this one did when it was over. Much like “Schindler’s List” or “American History X,” this is the kind of movie I think everyone should watch because it is so incredibly informative and brings the viewer so much closer to understanding the pain and monstrosity of a nuclear attack.”

Another viewer described it as: “A harrowing punch in the gut that nothing prepared me for. Unforgettable.”

Meanwhile, one audience member remarked about Watkins’ drama: “Really shook me up and left me reeling for a while after seeing it. Peter Watkins ruined my 3 day weekend with this masterfully done piece of film. Needs to be required viewing for every being capable of understanding images and sound.”

The War Game can be streamed free of charge on BBC iPlayer until July 2026, or purchased for £5.99 through Amazon Prime Video.

In 2020, “We Bare Bears” creator Daniel Chong came to Pixar leaders with an idea.

He had seen documentaries in which robotic animals with eyeball cameras captured footage of natural habitats. But what if that technology was so good that no one could tell the difference? And to make it even more zany — what if someone went undercover in that animal body?

That idea became the basis of Walt Disney Co. and Pixar’s new animated movie, “Hoppers,” which debuts this week. The film is Pixar’s latest attempt to break through at the box office with an original story, something that has been a struggle for the storied animation studio since the pandemic.

The pressure of Pixar’s legacy can be a little overwhelming and coming up with an original idea is difficult, said Chong, who directed “Hoppers” and also serves as a writer on the film.

“For a Pixar movie, it’s very high stakes,” he said. “But I just felt like I had a really funny idea, and I thought as long as we made it really funny and had characters you loved, to me that’s the key to every Pixar movie — really awesome characters that really connect emotionally with people.”

Recent theatrical success for Pixar as well as other animation studios has come from sequels, such as 2024’s “Inside Out 2,” which grossed $1.7 billion globally. But the reputation of Emeryville-based Pixar is built on its string of blockbuster originals, including 1995’s “Toy Story,” 2001’s “Monsters, Inc.” and 2004’s “The Incredibles,” making new stories crucial to the studio’s future.

People like coming back to familiar characters like Woody and Buzz from “Toy Story,” but the studio can do only so many sequels, said Pete Docter, Pixar’s chief creative officer. And some films don’t lend themselves to new chapters, he said, noting the studio’s efforts to look at “Monsters, Inc.”

“We’ve been trying, struggling for a long time to get somewhere with that, and we’ll see in the future how things go, but it’s been an uphill battle,” he said. “For whatever reason, that movie seems to be self contained and doesn’t want to go forward without repeating some of the same themes, which I think would be disappointing.”

Opening weekend expectations for “Hoppers” are wide-ranging, from $25 million to $40 million, on a production budget of $150 million. So far, the reviews have been strong, with a 96% approval rating on aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

“If we don’t continue to do originals, we’re going to run out of stuff,” Docter said. “If ‘Hoppers’ can really catch on, it could show that audiences still want original movies. They’re still excited to see things that surprise them, that are not just following through on characters and worlds that they’ve seen before.”

It’s been a tough time for original animated movies — and new films in general. As the theatrical market continues to find its footing after the pandemic, audiences still largely have gravitated toward familiar fare, including sequels and reboots, even as they profess to want new stories.

Pixar’s previous original film, 2025’s “Elio” cratered at the box office, partially beset by the tough climate for new animated stories as well as strong competition from other kids’ movies such as live-action adaptations of Universal Pictures’ “How to Train Your Dragon” and Disney’s “Lilo and Stitch.”

The pandemic played a major role in Pixar’s recent track record with originals. When COVID-19 hit, original films like 2020’s “Soul,” 2021’s “Luca” and 2022’s “Turning Red” all were sent straight to the Disney+ streaming service to give families something to watch during the stay-at-home orders. But that also got audiences accustomed to waiting to watch Pixar films at home, and as theaters started opening up again, families were some of the last groups to return because of concerns about health and safety.

“There had been a conditioning process,” said Heather Holian, a professor of art history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. “It was challenging to turn the ship around a little bit, or getting people to rethink how they engage with Pixar films and getting them back to theaters.”

To connect with audiences, Pixar films need to feel familiar in some way, but with a surprising twist — something that is incredibly difficult to do, Docter said. “Hoppers” also involved extensive, early stage collaboration with the studio’s story artists. Chong would give them a rough idea of his thoughts, which the artists would then use to develop dialogue and other details that expanded on his vision. That’s a bit of a departure from Pixar’s typical process, which involves writing pages and giving them to the artists, who then go to work..

Chong worked as a story artist at Pixar before he went on to create Cartoon Network’s “We Bare Bears” and then returned to the studio in 2019.

“Hoppers” could get strong tailwinds from the success of Sony Pictures Animation’s “Goat,” which was produced by Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry and tells an original story set in an all-animal world about an undersized “roarball” player who pushes to make it in the big leagues.
That film has netted nearly $75 million in the U.S. and Canada, with a global total of more than $131 million..

The two movies are the beginning of a potentially big year for animated films. After “Hoppers,” Nintendo and Universal Pictures’ sequel “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is out in April, followed by Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” in June and Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment’s “Minions & Monsters” in July. In the fall, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation plans to release “The Cat in the Hat.”

High-performing years at the box office traditionally are anchored by strong family movies, said Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder of the site Box Office Theory.

“A lot of us are so optimistic about what the box office can do overall this year because of the animated releases,” he said. “When there is appealing content out there, families are a big driver for this industry.”

The critically acclaimed war drama is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and stars an Oscar-winning Hollywood A-lister in a completely unrecognisable avatar.

A compelling wartime period drama has been branded essential viewing by audiences and critics, featuring an exceptionally gifted actor whose portrayal earned him an Academy Award.

Helmed by Joe Wright from a script by Anthony McCarten, this 2017 historical drama chronicles Winston Churchill’s tenure as Prime Minister during the Second World War, specifically focusing on the critical May 1940 war cabinet crisis.

The film takes its name, Darkest Hour, from the phrase used to describe those perilous early war days, when British forces were stranded at Dunkirk, France teetered on the brink of collapse, and impossible odds faced Britain and the Allied Forces. Churchill himself had used the term ‘Darkest Hour’ in his public addresses during that period.

The official synopsis reads: “The fate of Western Europe hangs on Winston Churchill in the early days of World War II. The newly appointed British prime minister must decide whether to negotiate with Hitler or fight on against incredible odds. During the next four weeks in 1940, Churchill cements his legacy as his courageous decisions and leadership help change the course of world history.”

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Gary Oldman takes on the leading role of Winston Churchill, becoming utterly unrecognisable as the British PM through a transformation requiring over three hours daily to achieve, using intricate makeup and delicate prosthetics.

Speaking to ABC News, Oldman revealed of his dramatically transformed look in the film: “It took three hours, 15 minutes and then getting into the costume and everything, it was just under four hours, 48 days consecutively.”

He added: “And then I would be dressed as Winston by the time the director arrived and the other actors for rehearsal. So it was very odd. They did not see me as Gary for three months for the entire shooting because I was always in my makeup.”

Shedding the character at the end of each gruelling day proved equally challenging. The acclaimed actor explained to the publication it was a “very slow process” whereby a special solution was required to dissolve his appearance, resulting in approximately 18-hour working days.

Oldman confessed he genuinely feared he “would not have the stamina” to endure the entire shoot, yet somehow pushed through and “loved every minute of it”.

Raking in $150 million at the global box office against a production budget of $30 million, Darkest Hour proved an undeniable commercial triumph, reports the Express.

Oldman was joined by Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Stephen Dillane, Ronald Pickup, and Ben Mendelsohn who rounded off a stellar supporting cast.

Beyond its box office success, Darkest Hour earned widespread critical acclaim, securing six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Cinematography, Best Makeup and Hairstyling, and Best Actor – the latter of which Oldman triumphantly claimed, along with the Oscar for makeup and hairstyling.

Boasting an impressive 84% critics’ approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, Darkest Hour received widespread acclaim from reviewers, with one writing: “As a portrait of leadership at its most brilliant, thoughtful and morally courageous, “Darkest Hour” is the movie we need right now.”

Unsurprisingly, Oldman’s portrayal garnered particular praise, with one critic saying: “Oldman brings a wicked wit and compassionate heart to the role, one for which he seems almost superhumanly suited for – and that’s really saying something, consider how many great actors have played Churchill.”

Another impressed reviewer wrote: “It’s an amazing performance: the only star turn I’ve seen in which a famous actor visible in nearly every scene would be unrecognisable if we didn’t know his name already.”

Whilst a fourth critic succinctly said: “Darkest Hour is a one man show for Oldman. And what a show it is.”

Audience responses echoed similar sentiments, with one admirer writing: “A deeply gripping and entertaining vignette of leadership from one of history’s greatest. Superbly well cast and designed. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. Highly recommended.”

Another viewer said about the film: “One of those films that gives you goosebumps as Churchill bumbles his way into history (again). Oldman is superb as Churchill and the filing is so atmospheric you almost feel as if you’re in the House of Commons or his house with him. Kirsten Scott-Thomas and Lily James along with Ronald Pickup are perfect in their roles. If you’ve ever been in the War Rooms in London you can sense the claustrophobic hive of activity that unbelievably held the British war effort together. A film that I could watch more than once.”

A third admirer added: “Gary Oldman was indeed phenomenal on this one. And even without Gary’s performance, this would still be a worthy watch.”

Darkest Hour is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime Video.

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The nominated Oscar shorts come in three categories — and a lot of subjects, styles and temperaments. It’s further proof that an award dictated by length needn’t be bound by anything else.

In the live-action category, a mixed bag of approaches — some inspired by classic literature — are burnished by inspired performances. Lee Knight’s “A Friend of Dorothy” may be a tad on the nose about the cultural and emotional impact of a lonely London widow on a closeted teenaged boy. But leads Miriam Margolyes and Alistair Nwachukwu practically shimmer with humor and warmth. “Jane Austen’s Period Drama,” a loving tweak of the writer’s oeuvre from Steve Pinder and Julia Aks (who also stars), is essentially a one-joke calling card to make feature comedies and it should do the job. Its cast is exactly the sprightly ensemble needed to land its what-if laughs.

Two others just miss the mark in terms of bringing their tensions to powerful resolutions yet benefit from who the camera adores. Meyer Levinson-Blount’s “Butcher’s Stain,” centered on a flimsy accusation against a friendly Palestinian butcher in an Israeli market, undercuts its gripping story with lackadaisical filmmaking and an unnecessary subplot, but lead Omar Sameer is commanding. The black-and-white future shock “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, is an uneven Euro-art bath of unrealized intimacy and casual violence — kissing is punishable by death, slapping is currency — but is given exquisite tautness by the elegant, unrequited swooniness of stars Zar Amir and Luana Bajrami.

A scene from “Jane Austen’s Period Drama,” nominated in the live-action short category.

(Roadside Attractions)

Then there’s my favorite, Sam A. Davis’ likely winner “The Singers,” from Ivan Turgenev’s short story, which pays off handsomely in bites of soulful warbling that briefly turn a barroom’s den of anesthesia into a temple of feeling.

Most of this year’s documentary nominees deal with the grimmest of tragedies, as in “All the Empty Rooms” and “Children No More: Were and Are Gone,” which address the remembrance of children brutally killed. The former film, from Joshua Seftel, follows CBS correspondent Steve Hartman and photographer Lou Bopp on an essay project into the bedrooms of kids gunned down in school shootings, their private worlds heartbreakingly preserved by their families. The latter short, directed by Hilla Medalia, witnesses Tel Aviv’s silent vigils for Gaza’s children, protests marked by posters with beaming faces, and sometimes met with open scorn. These are dutiful, sobering acts of mourning — Seftel’s is the probable awardee. You may wish they were more than that, however, considering the issues (guns, war, political intransigence) that created the devastation.

Combat is what drove award-winning photojournalist Brent Renaud, killed in Ukraine in 2022. But his brother Craig’s memorializing of him, “Armed Only With a Camera,” is oddly uninvolving, more an excerpted flipbook of Brent’s far-flung assignments than a meaningful portrait of excelling at a dangerous job. A more affecting real-world dispatch (and my pick, if I could vote) is “The Devil Is Busy,” directed by Christalyn Hampton and dual nominee Geeta Gandbhir, also up for the feature “The Perfect Neighbor.” It observes a day in the operation of a carefully guarded, female-run Georgia abortion clinic as if it were a newly medieval world’s last chance healthcare outpost, getting by on grit, compassion and prayer. You certainly won’t forget security head Tracii, the clinic’s heavyhearted knight and guide.

A scene from “Perfectly a Strangeness,” nominated in the documentary short category.

(Roadside Attractions)

Your chaser is Alison McAlpine’s appealing, aptly titled “Perfectly a Strangeness,” sans humans, but starring three donkeys in an unnamed desert happening upon a cluster of hilltop observatories. The whir of science meets the wonder of nature and this charming, gorgeously shot ode to discovery (both on Earth and out there) makes one hope the motion picture academy sees fit to recognize more imaginative nonfiction works going forward.

Animation, of course, thrives on the thrill of conjured worlds, like the one in Konstantin Bronzit’s wordless (but not soundless) desert island farce “The Three Sisters.” It owes nothing to Chekhov — though there are seagulls — but much to a classically Russian sense of humor and a Chaplinesque ingenuity. Elsewhere, you can watch the overly cute Christian homily “Forevergreen,” from Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears, about a nurturing tree, a restless bear and the dangerous allure of potato chips. The message gets muddled but this eco-conscious journey is charming.

It’s tough to predict a winner when the entrants are this strong, but John Kelly’s “Retirement Plan” feasts on wry relatability, as Domhnall Gleeson narrates a paunchy middle-aged man’s ambitious post-career goals, while the cascade of deadpan funny, thickly-lined and mundanely hued images stress a more poignant, finite reality. In its all-too-human view of life, this is, entertainingly, whatever the opposite of a cloying graduation speech is.

A scene from “Retirement Plan,” nominated in the animated short category.

(Roadside Attractions)

The spindly aged-doll puppetry in the stop-motion gem “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” marks a sly fable of need, greed and destiny, centered on a wealthy grandfather’s Dickensian fashioning of his poverty-stricken childhood in early 19th century Montreal. Filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski find an enchanting balance between storybook allure and adult trickery. Maybe this one steals it?

Whichever the case, the animation that moved me the most is “Butterfly,” from Florence Miailhe, imagining the last, memory-laden swim of Jewish French-Algerian athlete Alfred Nakache, who competed in the Olympics before and after the Holocaust. In the cocooning fluidity of an ocean-borne day, rendered with thick-brushed painterliness and splashes of sound, we travel across flashes of community, injustice, achievement, love and despair. The visual, thematic constant, though, is water as a haven and a poetic life force that feeds renewal.