Sundance Film Review: Animated Short Film Program

Film Reviews

Animated Short Film Program
Premiere: 01.24

 

Who said cartoons are only for kids? Since Jessica Rabbit swayed her anvil-sized gazoongas in our faces and canines endured experimental torture in The Plague Dogs, animation always had the potential to attract a mature audience. Just because it was hand-drawn, digitized or molded by clay doesn’t mean the final product is elementary. So after being kicked out of the Jackalope Lounge and getting chewed out for parking my ass in the reserved theater seating (give it a break, Heather — it’s a row difference), I needed to reconcile with eight out-of-the-box thinkers. Here’s how Sundance’s Animated Short Film Program went down!

Caries
Director: Aline Höchli

A still from Caries by Aline Höchli, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
A still from Caries by Aline Höchli, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Replicating the Canadian Stickin’ Around art style, a gibberish weatherman is unknowingly harboring a microscopic world inside his mouth. Within his tastebuds and gums, a crafty cavewoman runs rampant, creating sentient cave drawings and living off whatever gets stuck between the weatherman’s teeth. The scribbling doodles that look like a kindergartener’s math homework only make sense for a story like this. I feel like if it was made in any other medium, it wouldn’t be as memorable of a short. It’s goofy, imaginative, blissful and comes with one simple message: Brush your fucking teeth! 

 

 


Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado
Director: Natalia León

A still from Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado by Natalia León, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute
A still from Como si la tierra se las hubiera tragado by Natalia León, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

After returning to her black-and-white hometown in Mexico, a young woman begins to put the pieces back together of why she never returned. The grim tropic of sex trafficking is undeniable, as the posters of missing women begin to pile up. Such a heavy concern might be better addressed in a live-action form. However, the density drives the film’s message home with some surreal horror: terrified women stepping out of their missing posters asking the audience if you’ve seen them, tentacle appendages burrowing into an ice cream shop owner’s body leaving mounds of tannish flesh. It’s a mutilating subject that needs to be taken seriously! I just know I can’t look at a bundle of garbage bags the same way ever again…

 

 

 

Field Recording
Director: Quinne Larsen

A still from Field Recording by Quinne Larsen, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute
A still from Field Recording by Quinne Larsen, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Field Recording is probably the shortest film in the block — possibly 35 seconds, tops. This construction site orange blur-fest is summarized as “a meandering joke about three dreams.” However, I’m not too sure such a simplistic prologue does its due diligence. The rotoscope layers and shaking, half-developed FujiFilm rolls could be a type of improv slam poetry or nodding-off diary entries. The analog quickness of the short feels like you caught a demonic entity out the corner of your eye. What did I just see? What was trying to be said? Did we start at the beginning or in mid-thought? I feel like this review is longer than the film itself.

 

 

 


Flower Show
Director: Elli Vuorinen

A still from Flower Showby Elli Vuorinen, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Böhle Studios
A still from Flower Show by Elli Vuorinen, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute | photo by Böhle Studios

Flower Show is a high-society collage of free-flowing nature and the unbound spirit of adolescent girls, drawn like a Sylvain Chomet copycat, a bureaucratic gathering for the annual flower show goes south. It’s… alright, which kind of sucks because the animation can be art nouveau in parts, like a turn-of-the-century poster advertisement for absinthe. Those Easter egg pastels complement the rich Victorian era activities like croquet and frowned upon fox hunting, but weigh in more with aesthetics than actual story. There’s a type of deco-glam to the visuals that could cover The New Yorker, but it’s just acceptable when it should’ve been a major wow factor.

 

 

 

Hurikán
Director: Jan Saska

 A still fromHurikán by Jan Saska, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
A still from Hurikán by Jan Saska, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

A pig man does what a pig man can! In the urban Prague district, an anthropomorphic swine is taken on an action-packed side quest to retrieve a beer keg to impress a female bartender. Guy Pearce’s brutality exchanges handshakes with SIAMÉS music videos that makes a noir-ish feature. You sympathize with Hurikán as everything around him goes wrong. You just wish for the guy (pig thing) to catch a break! And when it ends with him not being able to return to the bar, your frustration is loudly audible. To quote America’s Next Top Model host Tyra Banks: “We were all rooting for you!”

 

 


Inkwo for When the Starving Return
Director: Amanda Strong

Inkwo appears in Inkwo for When the Starving Return by Amanda Strong, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute
Inkwo appears in Inkwo for When the Starving Return by Amanda Strong, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Dove, a nonbinary tribalist, must embrace their inner Inkwo, a spiritual medicine to protect their community from an army of skinwalkers. Don’t get me wrong, the stop motion puppetry is impressive, but the attention grabber is the subtle detail in the background and on the characters itself. It’s obvious something apocalyptic occurred here, with overgrown greenery on far-away skyscrapers and the bully characters wearing tattered knitted sweaters, using a flare gun as a primary weapon. The modern age has reduced tradition and old world magic to the wayside. Now, it’s the only driving force to keep our warrior going. I only wish this short was a series now.

 

 


Luz Diabla
Director: Gervasio Canda, Paula Boffo, Patricio Plaza

A still fromLuz Diabla by Gervasio Canda, Paula Boffo and Patricio Plaza, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
A still from Luz Diabla by Gervasio Canda, Paula Boffo and Patricio Plaza, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

When Martin, a raving diva, is involved in a mysterious car accident on the outskirts of Argentine Pampas, a posse of gauchos hunker down to fight an unthinkable evil. The director duo themselves said their main influence was MTV’s Liquid Television, which couldn’t be any more apparent. Hyper-realistic characters with an almost sci-fi mood in the raves and action is totally an homage to Æon Flux. The samurai-slicing fever dream keeps your heart pounding with hallucinogenic strobes and teetering overdose of woodland gothic dread. 

 

 

 

 

Paradise Man (ii)
Director: Jordan Michael Blake

A still fromParadise Man (ii) by Jordan Michael Blake, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.
A still from Paradise Man (ii) by Jordan Michael Blake, an official selection of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. Courtesy of Sundance Institute.

Our faceless, almost robotic protagonist is in the depths of a midlife crisis. With the death of his mother and the obsessive drive to get “a hole in one” (a symbol of chasing unachievable goals), Paradise Man strives to find meaning in the world. The short strips back all plot device filler and gives the audience the bare necessities of storytelling. If you think about it, his chase reflects all we are trying to do now: holding ourselves to these high standards of greatness, only to crumble and fall into depressive stupors when nothing goes right. So maybe we should give ourselves some self love once in a while, just to keep our bearings.

 

Read more of SLUG’s coverage of the 2025 Sundance Film Festival.