Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata directorial short film “Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024)” secured the acclaimed Oscars 2026 award. At Hollywood's biggest night, the 36-minute long French-language drama film claimed 98th Academy Award in the “Live-Action Short Film” category. However, it shared the prize with 'The Singers,' which rare in Oscar's history.
The last time two films shared the award was in 2013 when 'Zero Dark Thirty and Skyfall' bagged the prize for sound editing. This is the seventh time in Oscar's history that a tie occurred.
During his acceptance speech, the 46-year-old filmmaker spoke about the power of art and creativity and said, “We believe art can change people's souls. Maybe it takes 10 years time, but we can change society through art, through creativity, through theatre and ballet, and cinema.”
Who is Alexandre Singh?
Born in Bordeaux, France in 1980 to Indian parents, Singh is a visual artist who is best known for directing Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024), The Appointment (2019) and Plan large (2016).
Natalie Musteata first met Alexandre Singh in 2012 when she was working on a project. It was at this time, she realised that they “were incredibly aligned in the way that we thought about art, life and film."
Talking about her work experience with her partner Singh, Musteata said, “It took many years, but from day one, we were like, ‘We want to make films together,’ but we still had these separate practices. So, we slowly taught ourselves how to do the thing that we wanted to do.”
Their first short film collaboration ‘The Appointment’ was released in 2019, which was produced by Musteata and directed by Singh. “We love all kinds of films, from social realist films to very cold and dry arthouse films, but what we really love are those films that are imaginative and cathartic,” Filmmaker Magazine quoted Singh as saying.
Singh did extensive study on screenwriting books before coming up with their iconic film ‘Two People Exchanging Saliva.’ He was inspired by Will Storr’s The Science of Storytelling which discussed the concept of “the controlling idea.” The filmmaker made use of software Polycam to 3D-scan environments and Blender to virtually stage scenes.
Describing the short film that featured Iranian actress Zar Amir Ebrahimi, Singh said, “We want to tell a story with a beginning, a middle and end and attach ourselves to these characters and care about them. But because the circumstances of the world are not normal, [the short] needs time for these rules to unfold in a not-expository way."
