Strong year for Oscar short films

If you need a distraction from fighting about 'La La Land,' cheering at 'Hidden Figures' or weeping about 'Moonlight' — all of which might have been distracting you from other things — there are 15 Oscar-nominated movies quietly soliciting your attention, along with that of the academy voters. The short-film nominees are often unsung awards-season highlights, too easily overlooked except for office-pool balloting purposes. This is a shame, since in about the time it would take to watch 'Arrival' three times or 'Toni Erdmann' twice, you could take a remarkably wide-ranging tour of world cinema.

Even in a generally strong year like this one, the shorts display a cosmopolitan breadth and a stylistic variety that the other categories often lack. The animated nominees include handmade as well as digital productions, and dark, adult themes as well as child-friendly charm and whimsy. The live action and documentary candidates tackle painful real-world material with compassion, courage and imagination (though sometimes also with conventional sentimentality). All of the films arrive in theaters nationwide today and will be available Feb. 21 on many streaming platforms (though several can be found on various sites now). Here is a brief critical guide.

Animation

Before it was a mighty fief within Disney's Magic Kingdom, Pixar was a plucky and resourceful startup, and those roots are often most visible in its nonfeature offerings. This year's, 'Piper' (directed by Alan Barillaro and Marc Sondheimer), is a technical tour de force of feathers and foam about a fledgling seabird overcoming its fear of water with the encouragement of a firm but loving parent. (The story is a bit like 'Moana' in reverse.) The parent-child relationship seems to be a sturdy animation theme, figuring in Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou-Lhadj's 'Borrowed Time,' about a Western lawman dad and his Western lawman son, and Patrick Osborne's 'Pearl' (now on YouTube), about a rock 'n' roll dad and his rock 'n' roll daughter.

All three of these films show how much can be done without dialogue, and offer a respite from the usual celebrity-voice-driven cartoon fare that fills up the multiplexes. 'Blind Vaysha,' a film by Theodore Ushev with folkloric, Eastern European overtones, is a bit talkier, with a narrator's voice accompanying eerie, woodcutlike images. 'Pear Cider and Cigarettes,' the longest, richest and saddest of the films, also uses voice-over narration to tell a painful personal story about the life and death of Techno Stypes, a self-destructive childhood friend of Robert Valley, who directed the film. (It's available on Vimeo for a fee.) If I were voting, I'd go for Techno, but if I had to make a prediction, I'd never bet against Pixar.

Live Action

The predicament of migrants and refugees in Europe figures in two of the nominees, 'Ennemis Intérieurs' ('Internal Enemies'), from France, and 'Silent Nights,' from Denmark. The first, directed by Sélim Azzazi, consists mainly of a tense interview between two men, both of Arab descent, who have lived in France all their lives. The older man is a former convict applying for citizenship, the younger one a government official. Their conversation, which takes place in 1998, touches on terrorism, religion and the integrity of 'La Republique,' issues that could hardly be more relevant as France approaches a possibly fateful presidential election.

'Silent Nights' confronts similar questions as it traces the relationship between a young Danish woman and a Ghanaian immigrant, whose mutual empathy (and romantic attraction) is tested by the drastically different circumstances they face. The humanism of this film, directed by Aske Bang and Kim Magnusson, is shadowed by an inescapable pessimism, an intimation that kindness, while essential, may not be enough when survival is at stake.

There is nothing overtly topical or political in the other three nominees, which are also from Europe. 'La Femme et le TGV' ('The Woman and the TGV,' available for a fee from iTunes), from Switzerland, is almost rescued from mawkish triviality by the affecting performance of the great Jane Birkin as the title character, and nearly ruined by a cloying, aggressive score. The Spanish film 'Timecode,' about the clandestine activities of parking garage security guards, might seem equally slight, but it reveals itself to be a sly fable of creative resistance in the face of deadening routine. And Kristof Deak and Anna Udvardy's 'Sing,' my favorite in this batch, might be mistaken for a sweet story of the friendship between two Hungarian schoolgirls until the last scene, when it becomes a parable of defiance against unjust and corrupt authority. (Hey, teacher! Leave those kids alone!)

Documentary

Like the nominees in the feature-length best documentary category, the five films in this group demonstrate a commitment to both relevance and experimentation. Only one of them, 'Joe's Violin' (now on YouTube), follows the conventional, quasi-journalistic template, alternating interviews, archival footage and real-time events as it tells the touching story of a Holocaust survivor who donated his violin to a public school in the Bronx. The film, directed by Kahane Cooperman and Raphaela Neihausen, proceeds though familiar beats, but its emotions are genuine and its characters are well worth knowing.

Their lives are not easy, but 'Joe's Violin' feels downright soothing alongside its competition, which includes some of the most wrenching, unsparing images I have seen on film in the past year. The aptly named 'Extremis,' by Dan Krauss (on Netflix now), plunges the viewer into the midst of gravely ill patients and the doctors who must help their families decide whether to continue life support. The reality of death is something we often avoid, and even for half an hour, this film is difficult to watch. But it is also gripping, suspenseful and moving — a hard look at a hard subject.

Those words also describe the three short documentaries about the Syrian war and the European refugee crisis. Daphne Matziaraki's '4.1 Miles' (produced by The New York Times' Opinion section and available on nytimes.com) plies the waters off the Greek island of Lesbos as coast guard officers try to rescue migrants crowded onto inflatable rafts. 'The White Helmets,' by Orlando von Einsiedel and Joanna Natasegara (now on Netflix), and 'Watani: My Homeland,' by Marcel Mettelsiefen and Stephen Ellis, both take place in Aleppo, and provide a glimpse of the horror that city has endured in recent years. Too rigorous to offer false hope, they nonetheless affirm the necessity of witness and an antidote to despair. I can't choose between them, but I hope one of them wins.