During a key scene in the smash hit “Gravity,’’ Sandra Bullock’s stranded-in-space astronaut has a frustrating radio conversation with a man on Earth speaking in a foreign language. Director Alfonso Cuaron and his co-screenwriter son, Jonas, elected not to show the other side of the conversation in their film.
But Warner Home Video commissioned Jonas to make a 6 ½ minute companion short for next year’s video release of “Gravity’’ – and “Aningaaq’’ turned out so spectacularly well that Warner has submitted this remarkable piece for the Academy Awards’ Best Live Action Short competition.
Filmed on location in Greenland for $100,000, the short stars local Orto Ingnatiussen as an Inuit fisherman stationed on a remote fjord, and uses Bullock’s voice from “Gravity.’’
According to the Hollywood Reporter, Bullock told a Los Angeles crowd that the short, which has been screened at festivals in Venice and Telluride, is an “absolutely beautiful piece of loneliness….I get goose bumps thinking about it.’’
