By Cassidy Curtis
Publication Date: 2026-01-26 00:00:00
Today our animated short film “Dear Upstairs Neighbors” is being previewed at the Sundance Film Festival. The film will screen at Sundance Institute’s Story Forum, a space focused on artist-focused tools and technologies to support visual storytelling.
Dear Upstairs Neighbors is the story of a young woman, Ada, who desperately wants to get a good night’s sleep, but is kept awake by her extremely loud neighbors. As she struggles to imagine what could be causing the cacophony above, reality drifts into fantasy and an epic battle for peace and sanity ensues.
The film is a collaboration between animation veterans, including director and Pixar alum Connie He, and researchers at Google DeepMind, who share the goal of exploring how generative tools might fit into artists’ creative processes.
