Lou is the short film shown before Pixar’s Cars 3 in cinemas. Directed by Dave Mullins, Lou follows a mysterious lost-and-found box creature who confronts a schoolyard bully stealing children’s belongings.
The short uses a school setting rather than the racing world of Cars. Its story focuses on empathy, restitution, and the possibility that difficult behavior can come from loneliness or loss. Lou’s unusual character design combines objects from a lost-and-found box into a living figure.
Lou premiered theatrically with Cars 3 in 2017 and was later nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. It is sometimes confused with other Pixar theatrical shorts, such as Piper, which played before Finding Dory, or Bao, which played before Incredibles 2. Those shorts were paired with different feature films.