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Of the 10 films up for best picture, no fewer than six run 199 minutes or more. On one extreme, James Cameron’s punishing “Avatar” sequel is long enough to require bathroom breaks. At the other, Daniels’ Adhd-styled “Everything Everywhere All at Once” proves equally exhausting, dedicating every hyperkinetic second to stimulating easily distracted audiences. It’s enough to make folks grateful for the lower-profile but still engaging live-action shorts category, where nominees are bound by a strict 40-minute time limit. This year’s crop — the so-so “2023 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action” program — clocks in at under two hours. Available in theaters and on myriad streaming platforms, the international assembly may be a hit-and-miss affair, but never outstays its welcome.

Set in a rarely seen corner of Greenland, “Ivalu” follows a Native girl as she tries to make sense of her sister’s disappearance. It’s a visually striking 16 minutes,...

In the most prominent Oscar categories, many of the nominees are fairly established; the short film categories, and the Best Live Action short in particular, provide more room for discoveries. It was here, 18 years ago, that “The Banshees of Inisherin” writer-director Martin McDonagh won for his short “Six Shooter,” and where Andrea Arnold won a year prior for “Wasp,” from a category of nominees that also included Taika Waititi and Nacho Vigalondo.

It’s also a category that can attract support from major Hollywood talent, as with last year’s winner “The Long Goodbye,” starring and produced by Riz Ahmed, who shared the award with director Aneil Karia. Yet even in that case, the winner of the category — a spoken-word indictment of racial violence — was more daring and inventive than the bulk of the feature nominees.

In that regard, this year’s set of contenders all stand out for one...

“It’s just an extra chance to come back and enjoy it,” exclaims Oscar-winning filmmaker Anders Walter about earning his second Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film. Walter is nominated this year alongside producer Rebecca Pruzan for the drama “Ivalu,” which follows a young girl’s desperate search for her missing sister. Walter won in this category back in 2013 for the film, “Helium.” Check out our exclusive video chat above.

Based on the graphic novel by Morten Dürr and Lars Horneman, “Ivalu” follows a young girl named Pipaluk (Mila Heilmann Kreutzmann) as she searches for older sister Ivalu, who has gone missing in the wilderness of Greenland. As Pipaluk searches for her sister, the audience learns that Ivalu was being sexually abused by the girls’ father.

SEEBest Live Action Short Oscar 2023: Where to watch the nominees

Walter was given the graphic novel by a friend, and the...

Ivalu

At the very beginning of this Oscar-shortlisted short film. the title character, Ivalu, is missing. We follow her younger sister, Pipaluk (Mila Heilmann Kreutzmann) as she searches for her, guided by a crow, through all the places where they used to spend time together, in their small Greenland town and the surrounding wilderness. Eventually, she will discover the truth by making sense of her own memories. The film is adapted from Morten Dürr’s graphic novel. At a Q&a where he is joined by Mila as well as co-director Pipaluk K Jorgensen and producers Kim Magnusson and Rebecca Pruzan, director Anders Walter explains that he fell in love with the graphic novel as soon as he read it.

“I wanted to adapt it into a film,” he says. “And then the whole process of adapting the source material started and you know, trying to find your voice in something that.