Interview: Andy & Carolyn London – 1981 (Short Film) 2026 Sundance Film Festival

Set against the awkwardness of early adolescence, 8 minuter 1981 plunges the viewer into a moment when curiosity, fear, and desire collide without warning. What begins as a seemingly innocuous suburban rite of passage quietly mutates into something far more unsettling, capturing the strange elasticity of memory and the way certain experiences lodge themselves permanently in the body.

Selected for the 2026 Sundance Film Festival’s Animated Short Film Program, filmmaking duo Andy & Carolyn London weave memory through the exploratory possibilities of rotoscope, balancing the film with an expressive musical palette—most notably the inspired use of “Crimson and Clover.” Casting their son, Alexei London, they construct a world where adult permissiveness and youthful vulnerability exist without safeguards, reframing childhood not as a sanctuary but as a fragile, confusing, and irrevocably formative threshold fashioned with Bruce Lee’s six-pack and all the titillation and trimmings we could expect from Long Island circa 1981.

I had the opportunity to speak with the tandem about carving out identity at a specific age; what happens when adult and teenage worlds collide around sexuality; the role of memory in this specific era of suburbia, the visual prep and exploration of this basement space; the film’s use of song and animation style; and how the project ultimately became a family affair.