The Cavalry

Don't come to the program of Oscar®-nominated documentary shorts for escapism. But let's talk about the Canadian contender, Perfectly a Strangeness, featuring an abandoned observatory and three donkeys. More of this, please.

Having run afoul of an influential bureaucrat in Brazil’s military dictatorship circa 1977, Marcelo decamps to Recife to live under an assumed name — but he’ll soon come to understand precisely how rampant the country’s corruption has become.

In this Valentine to discovering love later in life, the ever-elegant Joan Chen plays Feng Xia, a 53-year-old Chinese immigrant and mother in Montreal whose world is turned upside down when she meets and falls in love with a young Quebecoise.

Tough Old Broads is a feature documentary that follows three trailblazing women as they continue to make waves well into their 70s. Because you can't keep a good woman down.

Mixing documentary and reenactment, this film powerfully evokes the desperate attempts of the Red Crescent to rescue a six year old child trapped in a car under Israeli military fire. Oscar nominee: Best International Film

Having offered some late-night assistance to a stranger in the wake of an auto accident, a mechanic grows convinced that he recognizes the supposed stranger’s voice as that of his torturer during a grueling prison spell.