Little Mes

Name: Little Mes
Released: 2026-06-03
Duration: 4 min 18 s

Lucas LevitanSalad Collective20264 min

AIPopDB score: 33/100
Format: Short film
Year: 2026
Views: 1.6K

Synopsis

Little Mes is a four-minute animated short built as a cinematic internal monologue. Its question, posed by the makers, is "Who would you have become if you had taken a different path?" It follows a man who grows aware of the lives he did not lead, and the film is about the doubt that stays with us over what might have been.

The other versions of him are not ghosts, memories or regrets. They are parallel possibilities, each a different professional path or identity, all existing at the same time. The "little mes" never demand attention or interrupt the present. They simply coexist, quietly suspended at the edge of his current reality.

Curious Refuge describes the film as a hand-made puppet theatre: a wooden figure moves between small curtained stages while a narrator reflects on the lives he did not choose, and each parallel self steps through its own miniature world of cardboard, clay and dim theatrical light. The theme, as that page puts it, is that identity is less about what we chose than about the accumulated weight of every crossroads we walked past, in a tone that is warm, wistful and intimate.

Last Updated 14 October 2026

About the Show

Little Mes is a four-minute AI animated short, directed by Lucas Levitan and Fabián Jiménez and presented as a SALAD Collective production. It was posted on Levitan's YouTube channel on 3 June 2026, where it can be watched free, and it is also shown on Levitan's own project page and in Curious Refuge's AI film gallery.

The makers' page credits Levitan with the writing and art direction, and Fabián Jiménez, Levitan and Zehh Castro with the AI creative execution. Editing is credited to Jiménez, Alejandro Tarraf and Castro, and the music and sound design to Carina Levitan. Reply's festival announcement says the project was developed with Kling, Veo 3.1, Seedance and Suno, and that AI was its central medium, built through continuous experimentation. Neither the makers' page nor Curious Refuge describes the workflow in more detail.

Levitan is a Brazilian illustrator and creative director known for his Photo Invasion series, and his own site carries the film as one of his projects. Salad is a collective of five artists, filmmakers, sound designers and screenwriters who experiment together with AI; Reply lists Little Mes under Salad Collective, Spain.

The film was named one of ten finalists at the third Reply AI Film Festival, chosen from more than 3,000 short films submitted from 76 countries. The finalists were presented in Venice alongside the 83rd Venice International Film Festival, with an awards ceremony announced for Sunday, 6 September 2026 at the Match Point Arena of Tennis Club Venezia on the Lido. Reply's winners page lists other films for its prizes, and Little Mes is not among the titles it names. The film is also one of five Merit selections at the Runway AI Festival in Singapore, where Robert Gaudette's "A Face Only A Mother Could Love" took the Grand Prix.

On YouTube the film had about 1,650 views when the record was last read on 6 October 2026, and 1,681 on 12 October 2026. Posts about it on Instagram from Salad and from Levitan drew between roughly 5,500 and 11,200 views each, and the pages read do not report any press reviews of the film itself.

Audience sentiment

What people think of Little Mes

Positive: viewers cheer the film and its makers, praising the look and the music, with no criticism in the comments read

Overall

100% positive

Positive 100%
Mixed 0%
Negative 0%

Based on 21 comments about the show on Instagram

By platform

Instagram21 comments

Praise

Applause for the film

“Muuuy chulo 🔥”

View post on Instagram

Praise

Loved and called priceless

“🔥🔥🔥🔥 Priceless”

View post on Instagram

Praise

A character with a memorable dance

“He dances like Christopher Walken...”

View post on Instagram

Praise

The music stands out

“Som da Carina arrasou tb”

View post on Instagram

Measured 14 October 2026

Fun Facts

Who did the AI work: The makers' page credits AI creative execution to Fabián Jiménez, Lucas Levitan and Zehh Castro, with editing by Jiménez, Alejandro Tarraf and Castro and the music and sound design by Carina Levitan.; Source: lucaslevitan.com
Tools named by Reply: Reply's finalists announcement says the project was developed with Kling, Veo 3.1, Seedance and Suno, and that AI was its central medium, built through continuous experimentation.; Source: reply.com