Oscar-Nominated Short Documentaries 2026: War and Abortion
by Rachel MacNair
Four of the short documentaries nominated for Oscars this year are quite worthwhile for consistent life education. (The fifth is a sweet artistic film about donkeys hanging around an observatory.) I saw them as a set in an arts theater before the ceremony.
Children No More: Were and Are Gone
This covers silent vigils in Tel Aviv in which Israelis hold up photos of children recently killed, usually in Gaza, with a note giving their names and ages, saying “was and is no more,” and their death dates. Interviews with organizers indicate these photos are documented from deaths that were two or three days previous, and each vigiler holds a different child.
When these vigils were held in places with many passers-by, there was intense hostile reaction. The vigilers didn’t respond, but continued to stand silent with their pictures, which was clearly the right thing to do. I’m accustomed to seeing this reaction to anti-war demonstrations, of course (also pro-life ones), but what interested me here was that so many yelled about how the vigilers were unrealistic. Or out of touch with reality.
But reality was exactly what they were showing. A reality that so many of those shouting wanted to be out of touch with.
There were others who yelled at them for not also having pictures of the hostages then being held by Hamas. That is indeed another reality, and also an excruciating one. For the first vigil, the vigilers went over to attend a different vigil for the hostages when they were done. Because, of course, the hostages are also victims of outrageous violence.
This is an especially good documentary for consistent-lifers since it portrays the exact kinds of things we do.
All the Empty Rooms (on Netflix)
This is another project where children who were killed are commemorated. Because these children were shot in school shooting massacres, there’s no hostility at all, but sympathy for the children and for the journalist documenting the aftermath for their families. It’s a good project.
This isn’t socially approved killing, of course. We don’t need to convince people that this kind of killing is wrong. It’s already as illegal as it can get. But the shooters do suffer from a war mentality, and the tools of mass killing similar to those used in war do have some degree of social approval, so we’ve occasionally covered this as part of our purview. It’s good to have a project focused on the victims.
This is the one that won, and I was glad to see it.
Armed Only with a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud (on HBO Max)
Brent Renaud was a journalist who risked his life several times to document wars and some specific lethal effects of poverty in various places. The risk finally caught up with him when he was shot in Ukraine in 2022. The work of such journalists is crucial to helping the public understand the realities of war.
The Devil Is Busy (on HBO Max)
This covered an abortion facility in Atlanta Georgia. Georgia has a heartbeat limit on abortion, so the facility did them before that and sent women elsewhere if the heartbeat was visible on the sonogram. The viewpoint of the filmmakers is that abortion bans are a bad thing. It’s worthwhile watching to get more of a sense of the reality of what abortion facilities are like.
As was designed by the filmmakers, I found the protesters outside to be embarrassing. They were all men, and they yelled condemnations through bullhorns. They asserted their own beliefs, totally oblivious to the idea that attempts to persuade would better achieve the goal of saving babies. The goal of helping pregnant women didn’t seem to come to their minds at all, outside of keeping the women from going to hell – unless, of course, the protesters did better and/or had women protesters at times that didn’t get into the film. The “devil” of the title is intended to describe the protesters as threats to women’s rights, on the idea of flipping the script on what the protesters were saying about where the devil was. So we can count on it that they were shown in the worst light possible. I just wish the protesters had made that harder to do.
They seriously need some training from a group like Sidewalk Advocates, a group that’s similarly religious but pays attention to experience and to the needs of women and how to persuade. I’ve attended some of SA’s conferences and find their training to be mainly well done.
The religious aspect was uppermost in this documentary. The featured staff member, a security guard, started the day with prayer and ended it (and the film) with prayer. Much of the argument was that women need not worry that God wouldn’t forgive them for this, because unlike the condemnatory pronouncements they were hearing from the bullhorns, God is forgiving.
I would say that this point is quite crucial in therapy with post-abortion people (I’m including the fathers and other family members here). But it’s a very strange idea that you can go ahead and do something you know to be wrong – in this case, an act of lethal violence against someone who is innocent and a blood relative – on the grounds that God will forgive you. The idea is therapeutic afterward, but it was never intended to be an excuse you would offer in advance.
Though it’s interesting that they made the argument that God would forgive rather than making the argument that there was nothing that needed forgiveness.
That featured staff member mentioned as an interviewee that she had herself had an abortion. It was painful for her. I’ve seen this pain many times. When she later got pregnant with twins, they were born prematurely and didn’t survive the day. Did this have to do with the abortion? Biologically, it’s possible. She wasn’t thinking in biological terms, though, but in divine punishment terms. This is common in post-abortion psychology, and therapy is needed. She was getting the opposite of therapy – she was having repetition of the trauma. Ironically, this is also a common post-trauma method of trying (and failing) to cope.
Overall, this documentary has the same feature I’ve seen other times: material that’s intended to advocate for abortion is actually good at making the case against it. Any pregnant woman who’s ambivalent, trying to decide whether or not to abort, would probably be more inclined not to after seeing this. And couples who think it’s no big deal to have unprotected sex since they can always get an abortion in case of pregnancy may be more inclined to think that maybe it is a big deal and they should be more careful.
As for recruiting more people to work in abortion provision? This was definitely an anti-recruiting film. It might attract those who think this is a noble pursuit that requires courage which they do in fact have. But, especially with the doctor’s comments, it’s a definite turn-off to any medical professionals who have good working conditions and respectability in mind.
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For more short takes on the consistent-life aspect of various movies, see:
Hollywood Movie Insights I (The Giver, The Whistleblower, and The Ides of March)
Hollywood Movie Insights II (Never Look Away, The Report, and Dark Waters)
Hollywood Movie Insights III (She Said, Cabrini, My Dead Friend Zoe, and Snow White 2025)
See the list of all our reviews in the list of all blog posts under
Movie, Television, and Documentary Reviews
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