The 2025 Oscar nominations were announced on Thursday, and two New Yorker films are among the contenders. “Incident,” which uses body-camera and surveillance footage to examine a police shooting in Chicago, is nominated in the Documentary Short Film category, while “I’m Not a Robot,” a darkly humorous Dutch film about a woman taking a series of CAPTCHA tests, is nominated for best Live Action Short.
Seventeen previous New Yorker films have been nominated for Academy Awards; a victory at this year’s ceremony, scheduled for March 2nd in Los Angeles, would be the magazine’s second.
“Incident,” directed by Bill Morrison, who produced the film with Jamie Kalven, chronicles a police killing and its aftermath. On a Chicago sidewalk, an African American man named Harith (Snoop) Augustus is questioned and then pursued by a foot patrol after leaving the barbershop where he works; after a brief scuffle, he is fatally wounded. The thirty-minute film chronicles the grief and outrage of passersby, but focusses much of its attention on how the officers’ account of the shooting evolves as the cameras roll. “My hope is that viewers will take away a more informed view of how police surveillance footage can be used, withheld, and mischaracterized to exonerate officers,” Morrison told The New Yorker. “Police oversight begins with public awareness.”
“I’m Not a Robot,” a work of fiction written and directed by Victoria Warmerdam, begins in a typical workplace and quickly turns surreal. To prove to her computer that she is a human being and not a bot, a young office worker attempts to identify a series of objects on her screen. When she fails the test several times, her grip on reality begins to crumble, and she confronts the possibility that she is, in fact, a robot. Warmerdam told The New Yorker that the film, produced by Trent, is meant to entertain, but that “it touches on some big questions: What makes us human? How much control do we really have over our lives? I also like the idea that, after watching this film, filling out a CAPTCHA will never again be quite the same.”
In addition to its 2025 nominees, The New Yorker released two other films last year that were short-listed for an Oscar nomination. “Seat 31: Zooey Zephyr,” about a trans politician serving in the Montana state legislature, and “Eternal Father,” about a British father considering cryonic preservation after his death, were among the short narrative and documentary films that the magazine premières each month. Those documentaries, and the magazine’s full library of films, can be viewed at newyorker.com/video, and on the magazine’s YouTube channel.
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An earlier version of this post misstated the number of films released by The New Yorker which have won an Oscar.
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