A short film by artist Alexandre Singh and art historian Natalie Musteata has clinched a 2026 Academy Award.

The film Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024) won in the category of Live Action Short Film, tying with The Singers for the prize (only the seventh time that a category has tied in the Academy’s nearly 100-year history). “Thank you to the Academy for supporting a film that is weird, that is queer, and made by a majority of women,” Musteata said when collecting the prize.

Onstage, Singh also paid tribute to the women behind the production, including Luàna Bajrami, Vicky Krieps, and Iranian-French actor Zar Amir, who was not in attendance at the ceremony having just given birth two days ago. 

“You are the hope in a world that is dark and absurd and ridiculous and horrifying,” Singh said, addressing Amir’s newborn. “But that is why we make films, because we believe that art can change people’s souls. Maybe it takes 10 years, but we can change society through art, through creativity, through theater and ballet and also cinema.”

Poster for Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024). Photo courtesy of Misia Films.

Two People Exchanging Saliva is set in a dystopian society where kissing is outlawed and slapping serves as currency. Within these confines, a shopgirl named Malaise (played by Bajrami) strikes up an enticing—and dangerous—relationship with Angine (Amir), a lonely, wealthy woman. Shot in black-and-white largely at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, the film also features a voiceover by Krieps, best known for her role in Phantom Thread (2017).

Alexandre Singh and Natalie Musteata ay the Cesar 2026 Short Movies Brunch in Paris, France, 2025. Photo: Lyvans Boolaky / WireImage.

Born in France and based in New York, Singh is behind a rich practice that borrows cues from popular culture for installations, sculptures, performances, and films that thrive on absurdity. He is represented by Metro Pictures and Spruth Magers; his work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris. Musteata holds a Doctorate in art history, has written for publications including Artforum, and curated exhibitions at Haverford College and apexart.

The couple first collaborated on the 2019 short film The Appointment, a dreamlike outing that follows a novelist trying to decode a mysterious entry in his diary. “We love all kinds of films, from social realist films to very cold and dry arthouse films,” Singh told Filmmaker Magazine about their partnership, “but what we really love are those films that are imaginative and cathartic.”

Luàna Bajrami in Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024). Photo courtesy of Misia Films.

The idea for Two People Exchanging Saliva emerged, the filmmakers told Deadline, as they observed how authoritarian regimes crushed personal expression. In 2023, for instance, a couple in Tehran was arrested and handed a 10-year prison sentence for dancing in the streets. “It’s so absurd,” Musteata said. “That turned into the idea that kissing is forbidden, because maybe in this world of our short film, violence is normalized and intimacy isn’t.”

The film also bears out Singh and Musteata’s artistic eye. In a making-of video, the filmmakers recalled how they dove into the New York Public Library’s Pictures Collection to seek out inspiration for the film’s language. “Once we’ve had an idea—it might not even be a fully formed idea—we’ll come here and start pulling things that seem relevant to the subject at hand,” Musteata said.

Luàna Bajrami and Zar Amir in Two People Exchanging Saliva (2024). Photo courtesy of Misia Films.

The research paid off in the short’s monochromatic palette, which draws out the store’s geometry. The cinematography, meanwhile, nods to Wenders and Buñuel. The film even opens with a small image of Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec’s The Kiss (1892). Singh, speaking to The Contending, noted how a black-and-white visual language he created for his 2007 project, The Marque of the Third Stripe, inspired the design of a dress that Angine dons. 

In 2025, Two People Exchanging Saliva made its rounds of film festivals including AFI Fest, Telluride Film Festival, and SFFILM. It is also on the 2026 César Awards shortlist for Best Fiction Short Film. 

This story was originally published on January 22, 2026. It was updated on March 16, 2026, at 9.40 a.m. ET, to reflect the film’s Oscar win.