Lost in the Sky
2023 · 12m · Sweden
Directed by Simon Öster
Genres: adventure, drama, sci-fi
Tones: contemplative, tender, tense
A lone rescue robot in a strange galaxy must reach a surviving astronaut before she is consumed by a looming black hole. Built entirely with practical effects, the film follows the robot's desperate, tender mission against the pull of oblivion.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Six years of practical effects in a YouTube short about a robot and a black hole should be insufferable, but Öster's refusal to lean on CGI feels like a genuine creative constraint, not nostalgia — the water tank and exoskeleton puppeteering give the film a tactile strangeness that CGI would've softened into polish.
There's a lineage here worth tracing: the tender sci-fi humanism of Andrei Tarkovsky meets the miniature craftsmanship of Ray Harryhausen, and Öster situates himself knowingly in that tradition through the discipline of practical constraint rather than pastiche.
The decision to puppeteer an actual robot on an exoskeleton rig for six years instead of animating or rendering it transforms every frame into something that feels present and weighted — it's the kind of costly, specific choice that separates a film you admire from one that actually haunts you.
Reviews
The beauty of this perfectly judged short sci-fi film is how much emotion it packs into relatively short running time.
All throughout Lost in the Sky, the story beautifully balances action and emotion to immensely impactful effect, resulting in a story that lingers well after you've watched it.
Festivals
- Méliès International Festivals Federation 2023, Méliès d'argent for Best European Fantastic Short Film
- WorldFest-Houston International Film Festival 2023, Gold Remi Award