The Oscars: Five short documentaries on the big screen

This year marks the first time the five Oscar-nominated documentary shorts are getting a theatrical release, which is good news for the filmmakers, the distributors (Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures) and for the Oscar pool participants who in past years had to take a wild guess at which of the 40-minute (or less) films might take the prize.

This year’s crop takes viewers from a sinking New Guinea island to a pollution-imperiled village in rural China; from an extraordinary multi-ethnic school in Tel Aviv to one Muslim’s quest for understanding and the defusing of jihad throughout the Middle East; and into the head of a young Iraq war veteran suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and her possible salvation through art. And each of these true-life depictions takes less time than the “CSI” folks need to crack a case. Here’s a quick look at the nominated films:

“Killing in the Name” — At Ashraf Al-Khaled’s 2005 nuptials in Jordan, a suicide bomber killed 27 guests. Since then, Al-Khaled, a Muslim, has embarked on a quest to understand the engines driving jihad and, if possible, change radicalized minds. At times, the film feels like a debate between one man and an entire, cognitively dissonant ideology (as espoused in the film by students at a madrasa, or religious school, and an Al Qaeda recruiter who calls a bombing that took 130 lives “a good killing”).

“Poster Girl” — The film begins with a young Iraq war veteran receiving a collections call — while in the process of wrangling with the military over $27,000 in back pay. Sgt. Robynn Murray went from cover girl for the Army’s magazine to poster girl for post-traumatic stress disorder. Listening to her trembling voice as she relates fragments of her combat experiences, one can’t help but wonder what she was like before she went to war. As a veteran helping her says, “They took an American apple-pie cheerleader and pretty much crushed her.”

“Strangers No More” — A portrait of the Bialik-Rogozin School in Tel Aviv, a public institution where young students from 48 countries find a kind of safe haven. Some of the kids come from horrific situations in their homelands (one is from Rwanda), but all those featured make remarkable progress academically and personally. The irony is not lost on a school administrator when one student’s father, struggling to keep his family in Israel, says he just wants his family to live in a peaceful country.

“Sun Come Up” — In the opening moments, an interviewer asks a group from the Carteret Islands of Papua New Guinea, “Will your island sink first or will everyone die of hunger?” The lands in question are being slowly washed away due to sea-level rises that many associate with climate change. The traveling group of young people from the islands has no negotiating experience and nothing to bargain with anyway, yet must make the arduous journey to persuade locals in neighboring Bougainville — still recovering from a civil war — to surrender land for the relocation of thousands.

“The Warriors of Qiugang” — This film follows three years of one Chinese village’s struggle to stop a factory from dumping chemicals that locals say have killed a river, are poisoning them and destroying their crops. Villagers aren’t even safe in their homes because in the rainy season, the plant’s waste water floods houses. The film, supported largely by anecdotal accounts, documents the efforts of one barely educated man who tries to learn enough about the law to sue the company.

The documentary shorts program opens Friday at Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood.

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