Pixar has made 20 animated short films since the late '80s ... "Lifted" tells the story of an incompetent alien tasked with lifting a human from their bed in the dead of night.

"We were handed a box of toys and we had to figure out how to tell the best story," Domee Shi says of joining the project ...

He is misidentified by a band of helpful aliens as Earth's ambassador ... actively working on the project, Pixar brought in Madeline Sharafian (whose short film "Burrow" is really stunning ...