Omnibus, co-written by Sam Karmann & Christian Rauth, won the Best Short Film Oscar, Palm d'Or and BAFTA during the 1992/1993 awards season (that's a grand slam in my British-biased books). It is a comedy about a man on a non-stop train desparately trying to convince first the conductor and then the driver to let him off at an intermediate station. Karmann is now best known as an actor on French TV, for which he also continues to direct.
Written by Jeff Wolverton and directed by Eric Armstrong, The Chubbchubbs! won the Best Short Animation Oscar in 2003 and was nominated for a BAFTA the same year. The Chubbchubbs! was the first short animation film produced by Sony PIctures Imageworks (SPI) and helped positiion SPI as both a special effects company and an animation studio (now Sony Pictures Animation) but its feature films have failed to dent the dominance of Pixar and Dreamworks.
Sniffer was written and directed by Bobbie Peers, a Norwegian filmmaker with a string of short films under his belt. None have proved as successful as Sniffer, which won the Palm d'Or for the best short film at the Cannes Film Festival in 2006. It is an unusual but beautifully shot tale, set in its own grey and apparently gravity-free world, about a man who works as a sniffer (watch it to find out!) and dreams off escaping the leaden boots that hold him down.
Simon Ellis won the International Short Filmmaking Award at Sundance and was nominated for a BAFTA in 2008 with his great short film, Soft. It is the gritty story of a son and father tormented by a gang of vicious, 'happy-slapping' youths, but with neither being brave enough to fight back. Simon Ellis went on to make the feature film, Dogging: A Love Story, in 2009 but scored less success with this film.