Goodnight, Lamby, a live-action and animation hybrid short film produced by Darren Aronofsky's Primordial Soup and built in part with Google DeepMind's generative AI tools, will premiere at the 79th Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Classics section. The short marks the directorial debut of Brooklyn artist Dustin Yellin and features the voices of Paul Rudd, Chris Rock, and Yellin's daughter, Zia Copernicus Yellin.
Selected for Cannes Classics as one of two contemporary works in the 2026 lineup, screening alongside restored prints and documentaries
Produced by Darren Aronofsky and Justin A. Gonçalves under Primordial Soup, with Villavicencio Studio and Google DeepMind attached as production companies
Live-action and animation hybrid built around Yellin's three-dimensional "frozen cinema" sculpture work, with an original song from Maggie Rogers
The short follows three-year-old Zia as she searches for her stuffed Lamby through a layered, surreal sculpture built by her father.
Rudd voices "Papa" and Rock voices "Copernipus" in a dreamscape that moves between oceans, caves, and outer space, according to Deadline. The piece grew out of Yellin's signature glass-and-collage sculptures, which he calls "frozen cinema," and turns those static objects into a moving narrative environment. Zia Copernicus Yellin, the director's daughter, voices the title role.
Executive producer Nick St. Pierre, who announced the project on X, framed the short as a live-action and AI film. Yellin and Aronofsky will both attend the Cannes Classics screening.
This is the second short to surface from the Aronofsky-led AI studio in twelve months and its first selection at Cannes.
Primordial Soup launched its partnership with Google DeepMind in May 2025, announcing three short films built around DeepMind's Veo video model and related generative tools. The first, Eliza McNitt's Ancestra, premiered at the Tribeca Festival in June 2025 and drew critical pushback over the training data and labor questions baked into generative video pipelines.
Goodnight, Lamby is the partnership's first project to land at a major European festival. Cannes Classics, traditionally a home for restorations and cinema-history documentaries, is folding two contemporary works into its 2026 lineup, per Cineuropa. That placement signals festival appetite for hybrid AI work even as the underlying tooling remains contested.
Yellin's gallery describes the short as a translation of his sculptural practice into film.
The Brooklyn artist's Almine Rech announcement frames Goodnight, Lamby as an extension of his "frozen cinema" practice, with the layered glass sculptures functioning as the film's primary set. The production stack pairs that physical work with generative video tooling from Google DeepMind, name voice cast, and a Grammy-nominated musician contributing original music. The credits include Primordial Soup, Villavicencio Studio, and Google DeepMind as production companies.
Cannes Classics is opening to AI-assisted narrative shorts alongside its archival programming.
For VP Land readers building hybrid pipelines, Goodnight, Lamby is a useful data point on what gets through the gate at a top-tier festival: a known producer, a credentialed first-time director with an existing fine-art practice, name voice talent, and AI tooling that functions as a component of the work rather than the marketing pitch. The 79th Cannes Film Festival runs May 12-23, 2026, and the reception from critics and trade press will set the tone for how the rest of Primordial Soup's three-film slate is received.
