Watch ‘Gravity’ short film from Alfons0 Cuaron’s son Jonas Posted by Wilson Morales
November 20, 2013
Source: THR, Bleedingcool
During a pivotal scene in Gravity, Sandra Bullock’s character Ryan Stone, trapped inside a Russian space capsule with little hope of survival, makes contact with a male voice speaking via radio in a foreign language. What unfolds on the other end of that fractured conversation, complete with a barking dog and a crying baby, is the subject of a short film, Aningaaq, by Jonas Cuaron, son of director Alfonso Cuaron, who co-wrote the screenplay for Warner Bros.’ $500 million-grossing awards contender with his father.
“The short had been commissioned by Warner Home video as an extra for the DVD/Blu-Ray release, but since showing on its own at various film festivals, it has been well received enough that WB are now submitting it for Oscar consideration in the live-action short category,” states Bleedingcool.com.
The idea for Aningaaq, which follows an Inuit fisherman stationed on a remote fjord in Greenland, occurred to the Cuarons as they were working out the beats for the Gravity screenplay. “It’s this moment where the audience and the character get this hope that Ryan is finally going to be OK,” Jonas, 31, tells THR. “Then you realize that everything gets lost in translation.”
Both Cuarons spent time in the glacial region (Alfonso once toyed with setting a movie there) and fell in love with the barren vastness of its frozen wilderness. During one of those visits, Alfonso met a drunken native who would become the basis for the title character, played by Greenland’s Orto Ignatiussen. But it wasn’t until Jonas, on a two-week trek gathering elements for his film, was inspired by the local inhabitants’ profound attachment to their sled dogs that he decided to incorporate that element into the plot.
