2018 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Documentary

The surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert (1942-2013): his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

The Bridge is a controversial documentary that shows people jumping to their death from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco - the world's most popular suicide destination. Interviews with the victims' loved ones describe their lives and mental health.

A Zen priest in San Francisco and cookbook author use Zen Buddhism and cooking to relate to everyday life.

Narrated by Sarah Jessica Parker, Honorable but Broken highlights the highs and significant lows -- the emotional toll of the job, lack of mental health resources, pitiful wages and overall undervaluation -- of working in EMS, and looks for viable solutions.

Five million Americans suffer from Alzheimer's disease and dementia—many of them alone in nursing homes. A man with a simple idea discovers that songs embedded deep in memory can ease pain and awaken these fading minds. Joy and life are resuscitated, and our cultural fears over aging are confronted.

This is a Dutch documentary about the last weeks of life in a Portuguese clinic for Emma Caris, a 18 year old girl who had been suffering anorexia nervosa since she was 16 years old.

Boys on Film presents ten encounters from across the globe, where the dangerous allure of a risky attraction yields emotional results — proving that the age-old adage of taking the plunge is as relevant — and sexy — as ever before. The 10 short films are: My Uncle's Friend [O Amigo do Meu Tio] (2021); Budapest, Closed City [Budapest, zárt város] (2021); Eden (2020); Chaperone (2022); Break Me [Knus meg] (2018); By His Will [שעשני כרצונו] (2021); Red Ants Bite (2019); Jim (2022); Hornbeam (2022); Too Rough (2022).

In 1946, Isaac Woodard, a Black army sergeant on his way home to South Carolina after serving in WWII, was pulled from a bus for arguing with the driver. The local chief of police savagely beat him, leaving him unconscious and permanently blind. The shocking incident made national headlines and, when the police chief was acquitted by an all-white jury, the blatant injustice would change the course of American history. Based on Richard Gergel’s book Unexampled Courage, the film details how the crime led to the racial awakening of President Harry Truman, who desegregated federal offices and the military two years later. The event also ultimately set the stage for the Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision, which finally outlawed segregation in public schools and jumpstarted the modern civil rights movement.

A committed, passionate teacher tries to make all the difference in the lives of disadvantaged students.

Using never-before-seen archival footage, personal photos, first-person narratives, and cutting-edge, mouth-watering food cinematography, the film traces Julia Child's surprising path, from her struggles to create and publish the revolutionary Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) which has sold more than 2.5 million copies to date, to her empowering story of a woman who found fame in her 50s, and her calling as an unlikely television sensation.

The documentary follows one woman's quest to overcome anxiety, depression, and opioid addiction through the use of psychedelic medicines.

Crownsville Hospital: From Lunacy to Legacy is a feature-length documentary film highlighting the history of the Crownsville State Mental Hospital in Crownsville, MD.

After being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, a young mother writes a letter to her daughter about their family’s collective journey to acceptance.

Henry Rollins narrates Lilly Scourtis Ayers' no-holds-barred profile of volatile Bay Area punk legend Marian Anderson, whose hypnotic beauty, devil-may-care rebellion and shocking sexual exploits onstage launched her to infamy before tragically dying of a heroin overdose at the tender age of 33.

Documentary depicts what happened in Rio de Janeiro on June 12th 2000, when bus 174 was taken by an armed young man, threatening to shoot all the passengers. Transmitted live on all Brazilian TV networks, this shocking and tragic-ending event became one of violence's most shocking portraits, and one of the scariest examples of police incompetence and abuse in recent years.

An in-depth and provocative look at the 1992 Los Angeles riots exploring the roots of civil unrest in California and the relationship between African Americans and LAPD.

The Wait to Nowhere: When a Crisis Goes Untreated reveals an unspeakable reality: children living in the ER for days, weeks and even months at a time, awaiting dedicated care. This film explores the issue and touches on solutions. True stories are told by those living this nightmare, including hospitals that are caught up in a failed system, while lawmakers help lay out a plan to address the crisis before even more children’s lives are lost.

Eva’s being allowed to leave the psychiatric institution she’s lived in for six years. After a long year of waiting, the news arrive: an assisted living residence is found for her. Eva takes the first steps towards the "normal" life she longs for: to find a job, earn an income of her own, visit her mother... even find love. While she’s taking stock of her past and works on her self-confidence as well as her trust in the outside world, she also fixes firmly on her main goal: to reconnect with the son she lost custody of 20 years ago and ask him to forgive her. The First Woman is a film about second chances, the search for "normality" and the borderline between lucidity and darkness.

Denise Van Outen lifts the lid on Britain's air fryer obsession and asks the questions on everyone's lips... how do they work, what can we cook in them, and can they really save us time and money?

In Fear, documentary filmmaker Michiel van Erp creates a collage of inhabitants of the city of Amsterdam who struggle with various anxiety disorders. Today, more patients with anxiety disorders seek professional help than those who suffer from depression, making anxiety the number one mental illness in the Netherlands. This film will show how a small number of those patients attempt to overcome their fears, in order to get on with their lives in the crowded cosmopolitan city that Amsterdam is today.