Aningaaq, a beautiful companion short film to the blockbuster Gravity, directed by co-writer Jonas Cuaron has been released online, showing the other side of Sandra Bullock’s character’s distress call to Earth.
During one of the most pivotal emotional scenes in Gravity, Bullock’s Dr. Ryan Stone makes radio contact from her space shuttle to someone on Earth. Although they do not speak the same language, Stone and the unseen man make a connection; it’s deeply moving and drives the final act of Gravity.
Now a short film showing the other side of that conversation has been released. Directed by Jonas Cauron, Aningaaq is a seven-minute piece following an Inuit fisherman’s (Orto Ignatiussen) conversation with Bullock’s character from the harsh ice tundra of Greenland. The film, which was shot concurrently with Gravity on a $100,000 budget in Iceland, premiered at the Venice Film Festival in August.
The short is stark, beautiful and lonely; it’s a perfect companion to the scene we saw in Gravity. THR, who premiered the video online, has more information on the short film, quoting Jonas Cuaron on the short: “It’s this moment where the audience and the character get this hope that Ryan is finally going to be OK. Then you realize that everything gets lost in translation.”
Speaking with the LA Times during press for Gravity, Sandra Bullock said of the short, “[It’s an] absolutely beautiful piece of loneliness…I get goose bumps thinking about it.” Warner Bros. seems to agree, as they’ve submitted the film for Oscar consideration in the live action short film category. Should it and Gravity get nominated, it would be the first ever instance of a feature length and short film on the same story getting nominated in both categories.