As "How Do You Measure a Year?" (2021 release; 29 min.) opens, director Jay Rosenblatt informs us that he filmed his daughter Ella on her birthday for 17 consecutive years, from ages 2 through 18, always asking the same questions, and that he had not looked at the footage in all those years. We then go to "TWO" as he asks seemingly very simple questions (but in fact are not simple at all) like "what is power?" and "what are dreams".

Couple of comments" when you watch someone grow up from age 2 to 18 in, literally, just half an hour, it is amazing to see the startling differences. And the shock when Ella, a child at 9, suddenly is a lot older and wiser just a year later. In the end, though, this is a love letter from a father to his daughter, and anyone who is a dad will likely think (as I surely did while watching this): "why didn't I do that with my daughter or my son?"

"How Do You Measure a Year?" was released in 2021 in various film festivals. For reasons unclear to me, this earned an Oscar nomination for Best Short Documentary in this year's Oscars (as opposed to last year's). It is currently streaming on Max, where I caught it last night. This documentary is short and sweet and moving. I'd readily suggest you check it out, and draw your own conclusion.

I feel like the beauty of this film is in its simplicity. The joys and pains of growth and the inevitable changes that we all experience as humans. The yearly questions were simple, yet as the years progressed became more complex and, thus, the answers more intimate. You feel Ella's growth and you feel the connection with her father. In the brief half hour, I laughed out loud and dabbed at my eyes.

Other than feeling like I wanted to continue to see Ella grow and would have enjoyed more years, I can't find fault with anything in this film. I rate it 10 because I simply don't know what else I could rate it.

This was a cute and sometimes funny film of a father (Jay Rosenblatt) interviewing his young daughter Ella on every single birthday of hers from the age of two until she turned seventeen. As one might expect, Ella's world view as a young child led to some pretty humorous remarks, but as she grew older, I was struck by the maturity of her answers to the same questions her dad asked every year. Most consistent were Ella's desire to be happy, with a relationship to family and friends as a key component of that goal. Her father also had an unusual question about how his daughter defined power, unclear to a three-year-old, but by the time she was seventeen, Ella recognized knowledge and education as the key to power for herself. Overall, an interesting experiment for a young dad to undertake with his child and stay on track for fifteen years. If you catch this short, take note of the couch; the original was replaced after thirteen years.

This film is a contender for a 2023 Oscar in the category of Best Short Documentaries. I was lucky enough to catch this film along with the other four contenders for this year's Academy Award at the Paramount Theater in Middletown, New York. If not for this limited showing, I don't know how else I would have been able to see it. So, Congratulations to the Paramount for making it available to enthusiastic cinema fans like me.