Set to have its world premiere on Sept. 27 at the Calgary International Film Festival, acclaimed Canadian animator Cordell Barker’s short film exploration of artificial intelligence is a thoughtful work on the topic.

Despite the animated film’s work beginning in 2018, the conversations with philosophers, AI experts, and even the reflections of a six-year-old make Good Luck to You All a prescient look at humanity’s possible outcomes with AI.

Barker said that the film was a departure from his previous works, like the Oscar-nominated The Cat Came Back and Strange Invaders.

“When I started into it, I found very quickly that it’d be super easy to fall into a cliche kind of making fun of it. Other than all my other films, which were kind of in the goofy category, sort of spiky action and all that, I finally decided that I was actually going to take a swing at it, where it looks accessible, sort of cartoonish and all that, but that the pace is slow enough. It allows you to see things and think about what’s being stated, which was kind of torturous for me,” he said.

He said that the difficulty was transforming these complex statements about AI into something accessible to viewers.

“What is the visual that I had going with each of these? These things, are they going to connect? So, for such a simple-looking film, probably my most torturous one to go through,” said Barker.

“Almost every morning, like winter and summer, I would go for a walk down Kildonan Drive [in Winnipeg]—it’s about a 5k walk—and that’s where I would torture myself on every working day. I would start my day with that, and then come home, hoping that I glean something that would allow me to move things around, and that it would all make sense.”

What he produced was an eight-minute short that weaves between a young girl playing with dolls, imagined television B-Movie plots, giant robots, and a commentary on the conformity of ideas.

Each of the scenes weaves back and forth between the various visual metaphors in a seamless way, which helps to illustrate both the ideas around the possibilities for AI, both good and bad, but also the fears about what AI means as a competitor to humanity and possibly even our successor.

Those conversations are driven by six-year-old Daisy, the grandniece of Barker, as she serves as the audience’s avatar.

“I was just sort of blown away by her intellect and just the way she would say something, and it has this very mannered and very contemplative quality where she’d be kind of going, ‘hmm, I’m going to have to think about that for a moment,’ and looking off into space. It just knocked me out,” said Barker.

“I thought, ‘she’s got to be in this film.’ So, I recorded her. She’s key to the film. Without her in the film, I don’t think there is anything. There is no film.”

Two eras of uncertainty

The title of the film comes from another young woman, then 14-year-old Queen Elizabeth (at the time Princess) as she addressed the British nation via radio to calm their fears at the start of WW2.

“Hearing her speech, acknowledging the uncertainty ahead, made me think of the unknowable scale of threat that AI could eventually deliver. I also loved the poised quality in her voice, considering her age. She reminds me of my young grandniece, Daisy, who is also in the film. Two different eras of uncertainty,” said Barker.

Barker said that the film has made him more concerned about the future of AI and how it will impact people in areas like media manipulation, job losses, and shifts in the economy.

A robot uprising turning against humanity as conscious beings set to preserve themselves, less so.

But given the heady topic, he said that it was less likely to be as popular for audiences as some of his previous crowd-pleasing films.

“I don’t expect this film to get the same kind of viewing numbers that Run Away, Cat Came Back, or something like that. Because those are more general audience, crowd pleaser kind of kind of things, right? This one will be more for the people that are willing to sit through and think about the stuff a bit,” said Barker.

“Although, I did, at least on a superficial level, try to make it accessible to even really young kids.”

The world premiere for Good Luck to You All at the Calgary International Film Festival was part of the shorts package Am I Dreaming?, which features several smart films engaging in examinations of different aspects of humanity.

For more details and tickets, see www.ciffcalgary.ca/films/2025/shorts-animation.