Oscar Qualifying Short Film Roundup: "Headspace," "Pete," & "An Avocado Pit"
This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the short films being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Headspace
Aisling Byrne
Headspace follows Tony (Mark Smith), a man with Down syndrome who is struggling to find a job that pays. He works at a local grocery store and lives at a community home with other people who have Down syndrome. Tony is frustrated that he isn’t earning any money at his job and feels stuck. It doesn’t help that the guy in the room next to him plays loud music all night long.
We’ve all lived somewhere with annoying neighbors. People who seem to have parties every night, slam doors at all hours, and decide that 10:00 p.m. is a good time to start vacuuming. Headspace digs into that discomfort. When home doesn’t feel like a place to relax, what does that do to a person? Not to mention, as in Tony’s case, how do you build a life for yourself when you’re being taken advantage of at work? Headspace is a quick fifteen-minute short, but Smith’s portrayal of Tony is so down-to-earth and lived-in that the audience feels like they’ve known him forever. It’s a snapshot of the type of individual experiences that people may not know much about. Even with its short runtime, Headspace manages to make the audience reflect on Tony’s life while sharing a laugh with him. Not a single breath was wasted here.
Pete
Bret Parker
What’s in a name? William Shakespeare famously asked that question back in 1597 and it’s being asked again in the short film Pete. Pete (Pete Barma) is not the name they were given as a child, but it’s the one they chose. They dream of playing Little League baseball with their neighborhood friends, but finds that not everyone is ready to let kids of all genders play in the league.
Pete is about gender identity and how difficult existence can be for people who identify as transgender or nonbinary. The world wants to put everyone into one category or the other, boy or girl, but that’s just not the reality for some people. It’s not the reality for Pete, who doesn’t know a lot about themself, but they know the name Pete fits them like a glove and they want to play baseball. It’s a gorgeous little emotional film, one that will tug on the heartstrings of viewers. It’s obvious that writer/director Bret Parker came from Pixar because she has that unique ability to get to the heart of things quickly and without making the emotions feel forced. At a time when a lot of media is going straight for sentimentality, Parker lingers in the sentiment and the quiet, beautiful way that kids interact with each other, leading with love and support.
An Avocado Pit
Traveling Distribution
An Avocado Pit is a night-in-the-life-of Cláudio (Ivo Canelas), a cisgender man, and Larissa (Gaya de Medeiros), a transgender woman. Their paths cross one night by chance, and even though it seems they have nothing in common, there’s an electricity between them. A crackling conversation of wit erupts and they decide to let the night take them where it pleases.
The film has to jump a bit of a hurdle in the beginning. It has to explain how these two polar opposites end up spending time together, and I’m not sure it fully does that. After their first, brief conversation, we get a little montage of the duo grabbing a bite to eat. However, any concerns about the logistics of these people wasting the night, talking and laughing together, washes away in the chemistry that oozes between them. Carlos and Larissa are an odd couple, but one that’s endlessly watchable. It’s a queer, Portuguese riff on the Before trilogy, except that Cláudio and Larissa have more on their minds and more lived experience than lovestruck twenty-somethings Celine and Jesse. An Avocado Pit is like all three movies of the trilogy rolled into one 19-minute short film. There’s dreamy romance undercut with the harshness of reality, and the realization that the night can’t last forever.
Follow me on BlueSky, Instagram, Letterboxd, & YouTube. Check out Movies with My Dad, a new podcast recorded on the car ride home from the movies.