Sundance Animated Short Film Program Is Wacky, Wild and Weird

I’ve said it before: The animated shorts are a mixed bag of good cinema. There are very few opportunities where it’s beneficial to go in blind into a theater. All assumptions are out the door, especially when it comes to animations. They can be kid-friendly, arthouse mental, terrifyingly hostile or eye-openingly provocative. Any way the reel spins, it’s a jolly ol’ time. And with Sundance closing their chapter in Utah, I might not get another chance. So let me hang up the Far Harbor pea coat and order a medium popcorn with a Rat Bastard Root Beer at concessions — let’s go to the (short) movies!

1981
Director: Andy London, Carolyn London

We’re at the tip of the MTV Generation, and young Douglas is celebrating his 14th birthday in his New York basement. Surrounded by his rotoscope buddies, the boy becomes petrified by the most traumatizing of birthday surprises — the arrival of a stripper, rented out by his parents. The short is unsettling, both in its plot and animation. The choppy, lifelike movements from each person were created by overlaying hand-drawn visuals over recorded shots, originally from early Betty Boop cartoons. However, the chicken scratch tracing laid over a white void feels uncanny. Plus, finding out that this was inspired by an actual incident that happened to one of the directors at an early age makes it even more wrong…

The Bird’s Placebo
Director: Rami Jarboui

In a Tunisian neighborhood, an amputee boy bound to a wheelchair dreams to see his imprisoned father again. With the unusual encounter with an endangered bird locked in a cage, a series of surreal events begins to unfold. I did enjoy the styling of this animation, beautifully blending a mix of both drawn and digitized graphics together. However, the story itself was a bit of a head-scratcher for me. There are moments that leave more questions than an honest review. Did the boy die and transfer his soul into the bird? How did his dad end up in jail? Why is he so mean to his mother? Why are the Statue of Liberty and Christ the Redeemer sentient beings? Confused? Yeah, me too…

HUGS
Director: Nicolas Fong

While biking around his neighborhood park, a pudgy sausage man falls into a sensory blessedness after seeing a couple locked in a warm embrace. What follows this is our love-drunk chodester fantasizing about all the different ways humanity gives a hug — casual side hugs, awkward haven’t-seen-you-in-a-while armlocks or even pound town waist wraps where you’re vice-gripping a fistful of ass meat… too much? In the end, we’re just big mounds of sentient dough, starving for some type of touch. HUGS symbolizes that interpersonal connection that every human craves, whether it’s a romantic signal or just a physical reassurance that everything is going to be okay. It’s kind of beautiful, if you don’t think about it too much.

Sorrow Doesn’t Sleep at Night
Director: Josefina Montino, Martín André

Secluded to a cabin in the middle of a Rankin/Bass forest, a grieving man hunkers down as he hides from the reality of losing his daughter. Unfortunately, mourning becomes a malicious force aimed to hunt him down. It’s like The Babadook crammed into a LAIKA Studios flick! Although bleak in subject matter, the short is extremely delicate with its ultracareful detail. Every set piece and character was created out of felt and articulated for the frame-by-frame art of stop motion. Just like how time heals all wounds, it’s those long hours of patience and precision that make this classic “cabin in the woods” horror a complete standout.

Cabbage Daddy
Director: Grace An

Growing up bilingual can be quite a challenge. There are many variations in dialects and pronunciations that sound nearly identical, but could be embarrassing when spoken in certain contexts. For director Grace An, this challenge is brought to life in the most hilarious of ways. For An, who is a Korean raised in Canada, the mistranslations can collide in a word-vomit of puzzling poetry. The short was made by snapshotting 74 illustrations, all hand-drawn with Crayola to portray a childlike approach to tackling a new language. It’s bright, humorous and just plain fun to watch, especially when a drawing of a butthole shows up on screen.

Busy Bodies
Director: Kate Renshaw-Lewis

Designed by the meticulous practice of screen-printing, Busy Bodies follows a race of green, Smurf-like creatures (they look like the Just For Laughs demons, if you ask me). The little colony works around the clock, shifting a quiet hilltop home into a miniature factory for themselves. However, as they push the natural resources to the brink, the overflowing machine of progress begins to grind its gears. There’s no doubt that this cutesy, Electric Company animation is a commentary on the constant demand of consumer goods. The routine feels rehearsed and unbreakable, just like an assembly line itself. It’s only when the forces of nature (and possibly reality) begin to tear down the design model and leave us with nothing.

Mangittatuarjuk (The Gnawer of Rocks)
Director: Louise Flaherty

Now, I’m not here to compare whose mythology is better than all others. However, when Zeus and Thor are in a back-and-forth lightning strike for the throne, the grittiness of the Inuit mythology can shiver some bones. As two Inuit girls travel away from their Arctic camp, a trail of colorful stones leads them to a dangerous discovery. Inside a desolate cave lives the Mangittatuarjuk, a grotesque ogress whose appetite for human flesh has frightened the people of Nunavut for centuries. The craftsmanship of the stop motion puppets is incredible, with the eyeless people looking like human masks, and the depiction of The Gnawer of Rocks is gnarly. For Louise Flaherty, her main goal was to keep the culture and language of the Inuit alive, and this short did it justice! 

Paper Trail
Director: Don Hertzfeldt

Possibly my personal favorite short so far, Paper Trail chronicles the life of the faceless “Steven Richardson” through a rat pack collection of loose papers. We first see visible marker strokes from a toddler’s imagination, doodling smiley faces and nonsensical scribbles. Moving forward, the strokes become pencil lead practicing basic math and cursive. Traveling through fill-in-the-bubble tests and mindless paperwork, all imagination is lost as Steven’s signature becomes increasingly illegible as years pass. I hate to admit it, but this short was extremely emotional without seeing a single person. You can see the soul of this individual fall away as the colorful plethora of crayons and paint devolves into repetitive reams of printer sheets, all ending with a crudely etched flower scribbled on a torn envelope. The urge for creativity was there all along!

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2026 Sundance Film Festival.