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Two People Exchanging Saliva (2025)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
The newest winner here, and the strangest. In a society where people pay for things by being slapped across the face and kissing is outlawed, a compulsive shopper named Angine grows fascinated by a playful young saleswoman in a department store.
Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata shot it in black and white and in French, and Zar Amir Ebrahimi leads a cast that plays the absurd rules completely straight, which is where both the comedy and the dread come from. At 36 minutes it is the longest film on the list. It tied for Best Live Action Short at the March 2026 ceremony, sharing the award with The Singers, and it streams free on The New Yorker's YouTube channel.
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Retirement Plan (2024)
7.3/10on IMDb
Released
Seven minutes of an ordinary man listing everything he will finally do once he stops working, and somewhere in that list you realize the plans are really telling you who he is right now.
Domhnall Gleeson voices Ray, and John Kelly's 2D animation keeps the jokes small and the sting quiet, which makes it the easiest film here to send to a friend who is counting the days to the end of a career. It was nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2026 Oscars, and it streams free on The New Yorker's website as part of its Screening Room series.
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Forevergreen (2025)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
An orphaned bear cub finds a home with a fatherly evergreen tree, until his taste for human trash starts leading him into danger.
Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears made it as an after-hours passion project with a crew of more than 200 volunteer artists over five years, and the handmade care shows in every frame of its 13 minutes. It is a gentle pick for families, with a real sense of peril along the way. It was nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2026 Oscars, and the filmmakers are streaming it free on the film's own YouTube channel for a limited time, so watch it while it is up.
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I'm Not a Robot (2025)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Lara, a music producer, fails one CAPTCHA test too many and starts to wonder whether the box she cannot tick is telling her the truth about herself.
Victoria Warmerdam wrote and directed this 22-minute Dutch short, which plays its premise with a straight face and lets it turn genuinely unsettling, so it suits anyone who likes Black Mirror but wants something lighter on its feet. It won the 2025 Oscar for Best Live Action Short, the first Dutch short to take that award, and The New Yorker distributes it free online.
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The Last Repair Shop (2024)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
In a Los Angeles warehouse, a dwindling handful of craftspeople keep more than 80,000 student instruments playable, so that children in the city's public schools can have them fixed for free.
Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers let four of the repairers tell their own life stories, and each portrait turns out to be about far more than violins and tubas; by the end the workshop feels like a quiet argument for what public schools can give a child. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Film in 2024, and the Los Angeles Times, which released it in its Short Docs series, streams it free in full on its YouTube channel.
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The Queen of Basketball (2021)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Lusia Harris scored the first basket in Olympic women's basketball history and was the first woman officially drafted by an NBA team, yet most fans have never heard her name.
Ben Proudfoot's film mostly lets her talk, funny and unhurried, and the gap between what she achieved and how little it changed her life does the rest. Shaquille O'Neal and Stephen Curry signed on as executive producers, it runs about 22 minutes, and it won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short in 2022. Made for The New York Times Op-Docs series, it is free on the Times' YouTube channel.
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The Long Goodbye (2021)
7.2/10on IMDb
Released
Riz Ahmed co-wrote and stars in this companion to his album of the same name, and in a matter of minutes it moves from an ordinary British Asian family at home to a far-right march at the door.
Aneil Karia keeps the camera close on the family, which is exactly why the turn is so frightening, and the anger in the film's final stretch is what stays with people. It runs just under 12 minutes and won the 2022 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film, and it was released free on Ahmed's own YouTube channel. Be warned that members of the family are shot on screen.
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Colette (2020)
7.1/10on IMDb
Released
Colette Marin-Catherine fought the Nazis in the French Resistance as a young woman. At 90 she travels to Germany, to the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp near Nordhausen where her brother died, with a young aspiring historian, Lucie Fouble, at her side.
Colette speaks plainly about what she lost, which keeps the film from ever feeling like a memorial service, and the bond with Lucie makes it a film about handing memory on as much as about the war. Anthony Giacchino's documentary won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2021, and The Guardian, which released it, offers it free in full on its YouTube channel.
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Feeling Through (2019)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
Tereek, a teenager hiding the fact that he has nowhere to sleep tonight, stops to help Artie, a DeafBlind man waiting for a bus, and one late-night errand on a New York street turns into a real connection.
Doug Roland's drama is small and patient, and its warmth comes from Robert Tarango as Artie, who is DeafBlind himself and plays the role with humor rather than pity. It runs about 18 minutes, Marlee Matlin is among its executive producers, and it was nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 2021 Oscars. It streams free on the short-film channel Omeleto on YouTube.
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Hair Love (2019)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
When Zuri's dad has to step in for her mom and do her hair before a big event, her curls turn out to have a mind of their own.
Matthew A. Cherry, a former NFL player, began it as a Kickstarter campaign that raised nearly $300,000, a record for a short film, and the result is about seven minutes of warm, very funny 2D animation that the whole family can watch together. It is also the most rewatchable film here. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2020, and Sony Pictures Animation released the full film free on YouTube.
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A Night at the Garden (2017)
6.6/10on IMDb
Released
About seven minutes of archival footage from the night in 1939 when 20,000 Americans filled New York's Madison Square Garden for a pro-Nazi rally.
Marshall Curry simply lets the flags, speeches and cheering crowd play out, as if you were in the hall, and the moment that lands hardest is Isadore Greenbaum, a 26-year-old plumber's helper from Brooklyn, running onto the stage in protest and being beaten for it. It is one of the quickest watches here and one of the hardest to shake. Produced by Field of Vision, it was nominated for Best Documentary Short at the 2019 Oscars and is free on Curry's own YouTube channel, which asks viewers to sign in because the video is age-restricted.
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Period. End of Sentence. (2018)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
A machine that makes low-cost, biodegradable sanitary pads arrives in a rural village in northern India, and a group of local women take jobs making and selling them.
What could have been a worthy issue film lets the women speak for themselves, and it shows plainly how a small paid job and a frank conversation about periods change what they expect from their lives. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2019, and Netflix offers it free in full on its YouTube channel, which makes it an easy pick for a classroom or a curious teenager.
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One Small Step (2018)
7.4/10on IMDb
Released
Luna has wanted to be an astronaut since she saw a rocket launch on TV as a little girl, and her father, a shoe repairman, backs that dream with everything he has.
The film covers years of her life in a few minutes, and it is really about the parent behind the ambition, which is why it hits adults harder than the bright animation suggests. It was nominated for Best Animated Short at the 2019 Oscars as the first film from TAIKO Studios, directed by former Disney animators Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas, and the studio put it online free on its YouTube channel.
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The White Helmets (2016)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
As daily airstrikes hit civilian targets in Syria, a volunteer force of first responders known as the White Helmets runs toward the bombed buildings to dig survivors out of the rubble.
The film stays close to a few of the rescuers between call-outs as well as during them, so you see the cost to the men themselves and not only the rescues. It won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject in 2017, and Netflix offers it free in full on its YouTube channel. It is the hardest viewing on this list: the footage of bombed streets and injured civilians is real and unflinching.
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Kavi (2009)
6.9/10on IMDb
Released
Kavi is a young boy in India who wants to play cricket and go to school, but instead he is forced to make bricks at a kiln as a bonded laborer, and the film follows his attempt to get out.
Gregg Helvey made it as his USC thesis film and shot it in Hindi on location in Maharashtra, and its 19 minutes put a human face on modern slavery without turning into a lecture. It won a Student Academy Award and was then nominated for Best Live Action Short at the 2010 Oscars. Helvey streams the full film free on his YouTube channel.
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Ryan (2004)
7.5/10on IMDb
Released
Chris Landreth interviews his friend Ryan Larkin, a gifted Canadian animator who ended up living on skid row in Montreal after years of drug and alcohol abuse, and renders the two of them as distorted computer-animated figures.
That makes it a documentary and an animation at once, and the strange imagery says more about talent, addiction and pride than a straight interview could. It won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2005, and the National Film Board of Canada, which co-produced it, streams it free on NFB.ca.
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Flamenco at 5:15 (1983)
6.9/10on IMDb
Released
Students in their final year at the National Ballet School of Canada stay on after their regular classes for a flamenco session with Susana and Antonio Robledo, the visiting teachers who come to the school every winter.
Watching trained ballet dancers unlearn their posture and find a completely different kind of fire is a pleasure even if you know nothing about dance, and it is the most purely joyful film on the list. Cynthia Scott's film won the Oscar for Best Documentary Short Subject in 1984, and the National Film Board of Canada includes it among the Oscar winners it streams free online.
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Neighbours (1952)
7.9/10on IMDb
Released
Norman McLaren took the frame-by-frame technique normally used to bring drawings or puppets to life and applied it to live actors, so two neighbors move across their lawns like cartoon figures while their quarrel over a single flower turns violent.
More than seventy years on, the technique still looks startling, and the parable is blunt enough to work on anyone, which makes it the best proof here that an old Oscar winner can still grab a first-time viewer. It won an Oscar in 1953 and is one of the National Film Board of Canada's Oscar winners free to watch online. Expect real brutality by the end, stylized but not softened.
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