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Juanita Wilson’s “The Door” (Ireland, 17m), is a broodingly photographed, icy heart-pounder of a family’s exit from their home after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. “Instead of Abracadabra,” by Patrik Eklund (Sweden, 22m) is a wide-angle variation on contemporary Nordic film comedy; Tomas (Simon J. Berger) still lives at home, after failing at his dreams of becoming a proper magician. Berger’s portrayal of the fumbling figure amuses.  In Luke Doolan’s “Miracle Fish” (Australia, 17m), a 2009 Sundance entrant, a clever-if-tricksy story of an 8-year-old’s birthday wishes for a world without people that seems to have come true. “Kavi” (US-India, 19m), director Gregg Helvey’s USC thesis project, follows an Indian boy who wants to go to school and play cricket is forced to work as a slave in a brick kiln. Neatly constructed activist fiction. Joachim Back’s “The New Tenants” (Denmark-US, 20m), written by Anders Thomas Jensen (“Open Hearts,” “Brothers,” “Wilbur Wants To Kill Himself”) is a gratifyingly cynical dark comedy that starts with “We are just fucked beyond all measure” and “Gross, you just gave her dead-guy flour” and moves to unplanned romance and opportunities for ripe performance. It’s like a 1970s movie from a clever parallel universe. With Kevin Corrigan, David Rakoff, Vincent D’Onofrio, Liane Balaban, Helen Hanft, Jamie Harrold. Program 95m. (Ray Pride)

“Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action” opens Friday at Landmark Century.

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Eleven directors shot scripts by eleven writers in New York City. Two days of shooting was followed by seven days of editing. “Each story had to involve some kind of love encounter, broadly defined,” stipulated producer Emmanuel Benbihy, who is also credited as “Conceptor.” Tristan Carne is credited with the premise for this “collective” film. Paris was the locale for the earlier “Paris, I Love You.” Rio, Shanghai, Jerusalem and Mumbai are scheduled for future iterations. Several of the short stories in “New York, I Love You” are marvels of craft and tone, and even the weakest—directed by Yvan Attal, Allen Hughes and Brett Ratner—are quite watchable. Mira Nair directs Suketu Mehta’s touching transaction between an Indian Jain (Irrfan Khan) and a Hasidic Jew (Natalie Portman) in the Diamond District. Shekhar Kapur directs a comparably poignant encounter in a deluxe hotel scripted by Anthony Minghella between an aging diva (Julie Christie) and a deformed porter (Shia LaBeouf). Taxis make for recurring locales. Characters include a Dostoevsky fan, a method actor, an NYU professor, a painter, a pharmacist, a pickpocket, a prom date, a prostitute, a soundtrack composer, and a wandering videographer played by Emilie Ohana supplying transitions and a sweet coda. With Carlos Acosta, Orlando Bloom, James Caan, Hayden Christensen, Bradley Cooper, Chris Cooper, Ethan Hawke, John Hurt, Cloris Leachman, Robin Wright Penn, Maggie Q, Shu Qi, Christina Ricci, Olivia Thilrlby, Anton Yelchin, Ugur Yucel, and Eli Wallach. 110m. (Bill Stamets)

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Shorts are made for many reasons, but like all leaps into the artistic-economic abyss, they’re made to be seen. Ask efficiency experts: the short snip of video on YouTube has become a predominant form of expression worldwide, both for the one with the camera and a daffy kitty-cat and for the one killing time at work (or at home on the dole). Yet the finely tuned short only rarely finds theatrical screen time, and usually only in the form of animation. A treat of a double feature starts this week at the Music Box, a package that’s been running several years now, of the Oscar-nominated shorts in two of the Academy’s three categories, animated and live action (documentaries aren’t included). Both packages are good this year; the animated selection has several shorts added to produce a ninety-minute running time. Selections from Russia, Japan, France and the UK bear the same hallmark: exceptional creations of a stylized world and a narrative of just the right length. (Pixar’s “Presto,” which preceded “Wall-E,” is the fifth entry.) But the live-action shorts are even more of a piece, with lovingly composed, stylized views of the real world, especially Steph Green’s “New Boy,” adapting a Roddy Doyle story about an African emigrant’s first day in an Irish school. So much talent in such small packages… (Animation, 90m; Live-action, 120m.) (Ray Pride)

“The 2008 Oscar Nominated Shorts” open Friday on two separate bills at the Music Box.