Star Rock
2019 · 5m · España
Directed by Aitor Herrero, Raúl Colomer
Genres: animation, fantasy, sci-fi
Tones: surreal, tender, whimsical
An alien and his mistreated pet coexist as best they can on a distant, arid and dry planet. Thanks to the sound waves produced by a device activated with precious stones, they manage to make the scarce food sprout from the dry earth. The visit of an intergalactic pirate determined to steal the minerals, and of his small robot, who also suffers terrible vexations, will trigger a peculiar love story between the two pets.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Everyone's going to coo over the twee alien-pet romance, but the real subversion is burying genuine suffering—mistreatment, exploitation, even robot abuse—inside this whimsical candy box and never letting you forget it's there.
The film situates itself elegantly within stop-motion's lineage of tender world-building (Laika echoes, certainly), but what elevates it is the disciplined restraint: the sound design of those precious stones doing the narrative work other films would waste dialogue on.
The breakthrough here is the robot—a non-verbal character design choice that communicates every beat of its suffering and eventual connection through movement alone, which transforms what could've been saccharine into something genuinely earned.