WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT COSMOS
2018 · 3m · France
Directed by Raphaël Bluzet
Genres: animation, comedy, dark comedy
Tones: contemplative, darkly comic, humorous
An astronaut named Roger recounts, in a dry and humoristic tone, the everyday difficulties of life in space, comparing routine activities up there with their earthbound counterparts. What begins as deadpan comedy slowly drifts toward something darker.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A deadpan astronaut lecture that slowly metastasizes into existential horror—this is exactly the kind of premise that makes you go "wait, WHAT?" because it refuses to pick a lane and somehow nails both the comedy and the dread without apology.
Bluzet executes a formal tonal pivot with remarkable control, grounding the shift from quotidian humor to cosmic emptiness in a sustained visual and narrative frame that recalls the tradition of intellectual animation—think Gorey meets Halas & Batchelor's wit.
The masterstroke is the narration itself: that flat, almost affectless voice holding the whole thing together while the illustration style gradually mirrors Roger's psychological unraveling—one performance choice that makes a 3-minute premise into something that lingers.
Reviews
An astronaut talks about living in space in 'We Need to Talk About Cosmos' — a dry, witty animated short that compares the daily activities of life in space with those on earth.
After making a short statement about the difficulties of going into space, Roger recounts, in a dry and humoristic tone, the problems one encounters there.
Festivals
- Cannes Short Film Corner 2018
- Hollyshorts Film Festival 2018, Coup de Coeur
- Aesthetica Short Film Festival 2018
- Les Intergalactiques 2018
- Comete Film Festival 2018