I love a good movie. Getting pulled into a world that doesn’t exist with people and places that don’t exist for two or three hours at a time is such a fun experience. I love all movies, horror movies to dramas to romantic comedies to basically everything in-between--except for short films. I don’t know why this is. Maybe I just stumbled upon five highly-acclaimed short films that left me never wanting to watch another short film, or maybe I just don’t prefer to watch movies that make me cry for thirty minutes straight. Regardless, I’m here to discuss those five short films that are contenders to win an Oscar on February 28. Please be aware that there are spoilers. So hold onto your seats and grab the Kleenex because they all share one adjective: depressing.

5. Ave Maria

The least depressing out of all of the Oscar-nominated live action shorts is most definitely Ave Maria. This short film is about five silent nuns in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Pakistan. Their normal quiet day is disturbed by a family whose car breaks down right outside of the convent. Because they are caring women, they let the family use their phone to call a cab, which doesn’t want to pick them up in Middle-Of-Nowhere, Pakistan. Trying to help, the nuns offer up their ancient car to the family. The day gets very chaotic when one of nuns has to become a mechanic to get the car started. Eventually, the family leaves. It might have been part the movie itself or just a glitch in the movie theater’s sound system, but this film was very hard to hear. So as you can tell, this one wasn’t all too depressing. What was most depressing about it was that at the end I thought, “That was kinda pointless. Nothing intrigued me.” The plot was literally about a family stuck at a convent for a few hours trying to figure out how to get where they were headed. But I guess that Academy was into that.

4. Stutterer

The second-least depressing live action short film was Stutterer. Greenwood, probably in his mid-to-upper-twenties, has low self-esteem because he talks with a stutter. He is witty yet still has no confidence and hasn’t accepted his stutter. Greenwood meets this girl, Ellie, online; they chat for a few months until she wants to meet him in person. Greenwood is terrified of what she will think about his stutter and doesn’t reply to her message. When he finally does, they decide where to meet at a restaurant and he almost bails right in front of her because he is still so scared of what she will think. As it turns out, Ellie also has an impediment--she is deaf. The two are meant to be. This one is also not super depressing, but the amount of sadness this man has because of his stutter is depressing for someone who is listening to this. He tries so hard to talk to his father in one scene and just can’t get the words out right. He struggles in his day-to-day life because of the simple matter of speech. It was heartbreaking to me, at least, but definitely not the saddest of them all.

3. Everything Will Be Okay

Let’s just put this out there--everything will not be okay. This Oscar-nominated live action short follows Michael spending his day with his eight-year-old daughter Lea, for whom he does not have full parental custody. The day starts out normally. He takes her to a toy store and lets her choose whatever toy she wants. Then the day starts to get strange; the pair go somewhere to sign a bunch of papers, then go sell Michael’s car, then go to an amusement park, and then to an airport. As the film continues, it becomes more and more apparent that Michael is basically kidnapping his own daughter and his daughter does not like it. Luckily the flight is delayed, they go to a hotel, and Lea manages to call for help. This film lands in the middle of the list because of its intensity. From the moment Lea realized she was being kidnapped, the audience could feel her unhappiness, which made it so much worse when Michael physically would not let go of Lea at the end. When authorities were pulling Michael off of his daughter, I felt my gut being pulled side-to-side. One side hurt for Lea, the eight-year-old under so much stress. The other side hurt for Michael, the father who wanted more time with his daughter. It was depressing all around.

2. Day One

This short film is one of the hardest to watch. Feda, an interpreter for the United States military in Afghanistan, has a crazy first day on the job. She nearly gets killed by a bomb and following that she has to interpret between the US military and the enemy forces. In the midst of the stress, Feda sees that the wife of an enemy has just gone into labor. Although she is merely an interpreter, Feda has to learn how to deliver this baby on the spot because due to tradition in Afghanistan, no men are allowed in the room with the woman giving birth. The film gets really graphic so I won’t get into that, but finally a male doctor breaks the tradition and comes into the room to deliver the baby. The baby survives, but the mother does not. It is hard to describe the silence in the movie theater after the mother passed away. There is such a strong connection between a mother and child; this mother held her child only once. This was a very poignant film with the happiness of a newborn baby surrounded by the dolefulness of death and war.

1.Shok

We have a winner! This is definitely the most depressing short film out of all the nominees. Shok is a film about two young boys, Petrit and Oki, during the Kosovo war between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (controlled by the Serbians) and the Kosovo Liberation Army. The two friends go through scary situations together like being outside after curfew in a sketchy area and being thrown off a bus and searched by Serbian soldiers. Their friendship continues no matter what. One day, Oki is at Petrit’s house when Petrit’s family is kicked out of their house by Serbian soldiers. Terrified, the family leaves. The worst part of the whole night of films happened at the the end of Shok. Oki is killed on his way out of the city. Much like Day One, the silence throughout the theatre was very prevalent. This film had me sobbing. I kept asking myself why Oki was killed and why I was watching this on screen. The sad thing I realized is that although this is a movie, things like this happen every day across the world. That is the most depressing thought of all.