The Oscar ceremony may not be until March 27, but the three categories of shorts are here to watch, and will be available at the M.V. Film Center. Live-action shorts play on Friday, Feb. 25, and the Animation Shorts on Sunday, Feb. 27. Documentary shorts will play in the following weeks. Here are the first two sets of nominees for viewers to watch. Vote for the ones you think will be the winners, and we’ll compare them to your reviewer’s picks.

Animated shorts

Five animation shorts make up the first category. They have been chosen by Academy members based on their creative and original use of animation, often without dialogue.

From Canada, “Affairs of the Art” by Joanna Quinn and Les Mills makes their fourth film about Beryl, a plump, working-class lady obsessed with drawing. Her dream of going to art school is subverted when she becomes pregnant with Colin, and her misadventures make up this tale. Each of the characters is hand-drawn, and this short has already won many awards.

“Bestia,” a Chilean short directed by Hugo Covarrubias, is a tale about an evil intelligence agent named Ingrid, who looks deceptively like a porcelain doll. Set during the regime of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, Ingrid uses dogs to torture innocents sexually, and even chops off one man’s head. The short explores Ingrid’s psyche, and she looks remarkably like the real Ingrid on whom the story was based.

In a Russian animated short, “Boxballet,” directed by Anton Dyakov, a seemingly delicate ballet dancer named Olga is matched with a brutish boxer named Evgeny. The contrast between these two is what makes this story, set in 1991 with the collapse of the Soviet Union. A romantic triangle develops when a ballet director, attracted to Olga, appears on the scene. The question is, Which one will she commit to?

“Robin Robin” from Great Britain is a charming story about a bird, a robin, who grows up with a family of mice. She longs to become a mouse, but her misadventures suggest she must face the reality of who she is. The directors of this film are Daniel Ojari and Michael Please, and the voices are provided by Gillian Anderson and Richard E. Grant.

Finally comes “The Windshield Wiper” from Spain, directed by Alberto Mielgo. The viewer sees a man seated in a café and smoking. He poses the question, “What is love?” The responses he gets from friends and acquaintances vary considerably. Among those in vignettes include a homeless derelict who envisions a store mannequin as a love object, and a couple sitting quietly on a beach, with the woman tellingly topless.

Live-action shorts

While the imagery may be important in this category, the narrative is what makes them compelling, unlike the animation shorts, where the quality and originality of the design are what count, and can make watching them a challenge.

Here are the first two nominees for viewers to watch. First up is “Ala Kachuu: Take and Run,” directed by Maria Brendle of Switzerland. A Central Asian mother (Taalaykan Abazova) and her daughter, Sezam (Alina Turdumamatova), are shown kneading bread. In their conversation, Sezim tries to convince her mother that she be allowed to attend the university. After she takes a bus to the city for the entrance examination, Sezim decides to stay with her cousin Aksana (Madina Abazova), who is considered a tramp by members of the family because she has left her mother. Despite this, Sezim gets a job in a bakery to support herself and waits for the results of the examination.

Three men enter the store looking for Sezim’s colleague, who, she explains, has gone home sick. In a following scene, she is abducted by the men and taken to her family’s remote country village. The plan is to force her to marry Dyrbek, and as much as she resists, a wedding is what happens.

What follows are her attempts to escape the marriage and return to the city. The theme of this compelling short is the widespread practice of kidnapping young women and forcing them to marry.

The second short, “On My Mind,” comes from Denmark, and is directed by Martin Strange-Hansen. Henrik (Rasmus Hammerich) enters a bar and asks for a drink. The waitress Louise (Camilla Bendix) gives him several, and he quaffs them. Seeing a karaoke setup, he asks the manager Preben (Ole Boisen) to let him sing the song “Always on My Mind” for his lady friend. Friction develops with Preben, but he is finally allowed to sing. The final scene then cuts to the haunting reason he wants to sing this song.

Directed by K.D. Davila and from the U.S., “Please Hold” describes what happens to Mateo (Erick Lopez) after he is arrested for unknown reasons. He happens to be walking down the street when a drone in a mechanical voice confronts him and orders him to handcuff himself for arrest.

Then he is seen walking down a prison hallway and entering room C-14. In a conversation with the voice on a TV monitor, he insists that he didn’t do anything wrong, and asks to speak to a human. He is ignored by an organization called Correcti-corps, and after being told by a drone that he should plead guilty rather than risk a long prison sentence, he still opts to plead innocent. Next he talks to a defense lawyer who will charge $10,000. When he asks to call the L.A. Police Department, he runs out of the $3-a-minute charge that empties his bank account. Meanwhile he crochets items to earn money, and talks to his mother, asking her to foot the $10,000 charge for a crime he knows he hasn’t committed. Eventually he is told he’s being discharged, but his troubles aren’t over.

Acid rock music opens the next short from Poland, titled “The Dress” and directed by Tadeusz Lysiak. The viewer meets Julka (Anna Dzieduszycka), a dwarf who works as a maid in a motel. Julka smokes constantly, and has a tough, embittered demeanor. The viewer learns she is lonely and longs for a romantic sexual liaison.

She meets Bogdan (Szymon Pietor Warszawskti), a truck driver who seems attracted to her. Full of hope, she wants a dress appropriate for the occasion when he returns. The woman she works with brings her one, and she waits for Bogdan. When he does show up, she has her sexual liaison, but it turns out to be not what she expected.

Finally there is “The Long Goodbye,” a dystopian short from Britain directed by Aneil Karia. In it, a South Asian family are happily preparing for a family get-together. Then violence erupts, and they are dragged out and into a van. Many are shot point-blank, except for Riz (Riz Ahmed), who has also been shot, but not fatally. He proceeds to give a monologue about his experience living in England while feeling alien.

Because of their length, the documentary shorts won’t be reviewed until Thursday, March 3, but readers can still vote for their favorites by sending them to calendar@mvtimes.com.