16 Oct 2026 · 2,765 works · 693 news indexed
Synopsis
Le Drip is a French-language animated dark comedy of a little under five minutes, told in moving images that look like oil paintings. Its tagline is "A slow drip and a bit of an existential crisis."
Accounts of the premise differ slightly. The coverage of the Reply AI Film Festival describes an animated short about a fish's final day on Earth, shown through living oil paintings in dense, textured brushstrokes that move, while Reply's own finalist announcement calls it the last day on Earth. The makers describe the last day of a fish in a sink.
The film uses its painted surfaces to explore human emotion through that one small, doomed character, and it plays the end of things as a slow drip and an existential crisis rather than a catastrophe.
Last Updated 14 October 2026
Le Drip is a French-language animated short film of about five minutes (4:40 on one festival listing), directed by Alex Naghavi and Ezra Li from an idea by screenwriter Jessie Hughes, and finished in 2026. It is free to watch in full on YouTube as "Le Drip | AI Short Film | Alex Naghavi & Ezra Li". Shortverse lists it as a dark comedy.
The makers call it an AI-generated film in which every creative decision was made by humans. By their filmmaker statement, they built it shot by shot in Flora, a node-based platform, using Nano Banana, Claude and Seedance inside it, with Runway for storyboarding and video generation, Leonardo for extra video, Adobe tools for video and sound, Google AI Studio for a custom end-credits tool, and ElevenLabs for voice transformation and some sound effects. They say the story, screenplay, performance, editing, sound design, foley, colour and art direction were done by people. In a Machine Cinema talk they describe vibe-coding their own parametric tools for effects such as a stop-motion wiggle, and studying painters such as Munch so the film would not look like plastic AI.
Naghavi and Li met at the inaugural Google Flow Sessions residency in late 2025, and the original concept came from Hughes during the pandemic, per Shortverse. Reply describes the two as visual artists and directors from Australia and the United States, while the festival coverage calls them American.
Ezra Li posted a teaser reel on Instagram on 6 May 2026, which had 3,777 views when read on 6 October 2026. The full film on YouTube had 2,653 views on the same day. It was one of ten finalists of the third Reply AI Film Festival, chosen from more than 3,000 submissions from 76 countries. The Reply AI Film Festival ran its winners ceremony on Sunday 6 September 2026 at the Match Point Arena, Tennis Club Venezia on the Lido, alongside the 83rd Venice International Film Festival.
Le Drip took second place, behind Robert Gaudette's A Face Only A Mother Could Love and ahead of the 2xLabs collective's Centenarian Kindergarten, before a jury chaired by Gabriele Salvatores. The AI Film Creator Showcase's Top 10 AI Videos list of 5 September 2026 also featured it, and Altera's Festival 2026 interview with the pair is titled with Best Animated Film.
Audience sentiment
Mostly positive: viewers love the painted look, its tenderness and the doomed fish; all 28 counted comments are warm, though only the film's own and festival-list pages were readable
100% positive
Based on 27 comments about the show on YouTube and Instagram
“BEAUTIFUL work; images/painted art style, music, comedy, drama, details, for example: chipped paint on exterior window sill, faucet handles, movement of paint throughout. Just so lovely. Thank you so much🎉💐”View comment on YouTube
“Thanks for the beauty and the delicacy. Is so intimate, it made my day.”View comment on YouTube
“He’s so me”View post on Instagram
“Just finished watching the Machine Cinema GenTalks episode! Solid work to the both of you. Strong execution 💪🏿🫡”View comment on YouTube
“Congrats to all the winners! Le Drip is a masterpiece!!!”View comment on YouTube
Measured 14 October 2026
Image: ytimg.com
Image: ytimg.com
Image: ytimg.com
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