In an awards landscape often dominated by polished prestige dramas and high-budget studio contenders, it is rare for a short film to feel truly essential, urgent in theme, original in voice, and startlingly resonant with the cultural moment. Yet SNIPPED, the darkly humorous and deeply human short film from Oscar-nominated producer Rebecca Pruzan and award-winning writer-director Alexander Saul, is exactly that kind of work. Now officially Oscar-qualified, SNIPPED stands not only as one of the most distinctive shorts of the season, but as a necessary film, one that not only deserves Academy recognition, but embodies what the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film should celebrate in 2025.

A Story Only Cinema Could Tell, and Only Now Could Be Told

Based on true events from Saul’s own experience converting to Judaism, SNIPPED follows Adam as he undergoes a ritual circumcision in a small Muslim clinic. What begins as a sacred rite unspools into an unexpectedly tense, intimate, and absurd encounter, infused with cultural misalignment, existential vulnerability, and flashes of startling tenderness.

In lesser hands, the premise could tilt toward parody or provocation for provocation’s sake. But Saul approaches the material with razor-sharp tonal control, SNIPPED is funny in the way the deepest truths are funny, and moving in the way the most uncomfortable questions demand to be faced. It is a film about identity, ritual, masculinity, and coexistence, delivered through the deceptively simple scenario of one “holy snip.”

This is the kind of bold, boundary-pushing storytelling that short films exist to make possible. And it is precisely the kind of storytelling the Academy has historically rewarded when it recognizes cultural courage.

A Visionary Director Exploring the Line Between the Real and the Absurd

Saul’s distinctive style, honed through acclaimed festival shorts such as LOVESICK and the earlier festival version of SNIPPED, marries realism with uncomfortable absurdity. His work, already screened at HollyShorts, Nordisk Panorama, and Odense International Film Festival, has earned attention for its fearless engagement with identity, mental health, and human vulnerability.

“I wanted to explore what happens when religious rituals collide with the politics of identity,” Saul says. “SNIPPED is not a plea, but a provocation.”

This is not provocation as spectacle, but as a tool for empathy. In an age when media increasingly polarizes, Saul uses humor to disarm and humanity to rebuild. His parallel work as an ambassador for PsykInfo, giving public talks on mental illness and representation, deepens this ethos, storytelling not as performance, but as service.

The Academy often celebrates filmmakers who challenge the status quo. In this sense, Saul doesn’t just deserve a nomination, he embodies the very spirit of the award.

An Extraordinary Cast and a Cross-Cultural Ensemble

The film features a standout performance by Louis Bodnia Andersen, supported by an ensemble that includes Nicolas Bro, Ellaha Lack, Imad Abul-Foul, Sami Darr, and Jan Karwowski. Each brings sharp comic instincts tempered with palpable interior life. Their performances transform a small clinical room into a crucible of identity, faith, and human awkwardness.

Oscar voters know how rare it is to find a short film with performances this layered, this unexpected, and this alive.

Craft Excellence Led by an Award-Winning Team

Behind the camera, SNIPPED is a testament to the power of world-class craft in the short format. The film’s body of collaborators reads like a who’s-who of Danish filmmaking:

• Kim Magnusson, Oscar winner and multiple-time nominee, lending the film pedigree and production mastery
• Jonas Møller, cinematography that tightens the tension while allowing space for humor to breathe
• Mira Thu, editing that navigates tonal pivot-points with surgical precision
• Mads Hølmer, sound design that captures the claustrophobic immediacy of the ritual itself
• Music by Henrik Goldschmidt, Bilal Irshed, Rosanna Lorenzen, and Anders Singh Vesterdahl, whose score threads together cultural textures without ever caricaturing them

Oscar-winning craftsmanship elevates the film, but it never overwhelms its emotional core. Instead, it grounds the absurd in the real, and the real in the universal.

A Rare Film of Cultural Courage in a Time of Division

Perhaps the most profound reason SNIPPED deserves to win the Oscar is its cultural relevance. The film confronts, with both humor and compassion, the intersections of Judaism and Islam, tradition and modernity, identity and belonging.

At a moment when global narratives about these communities are too often framed around conflict, SNIPPED offers something radical, a story about shared humanity, awkward coexistence, and unexpected connection.

Saul’s hope that the film “inspires peace over hatred” gives SNIPPED a moral clarity without a trace of preachiness. It is provocative, yes, but its provocation is toward empathy.

The Film the Academy Should Reward

If the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film is meant to highlight artistic daring, cultural insight, and filmmaking excellence, then SNIPPED is not just a contender, it is the exemplar.

It is a film that makes us laugh, then think, then question the world we live in. It is cinema distilled to its sharpest and most humane essence. And above all,

It is the rare short film whose impact outgrows its runtime.

That is why SNIPPED shouldn’t simply be nominated,
It should win.