'Gravity' Tie-In Short Film to be Released On the DVD/Blu-Ray

Alfonso Cuaron's long-awaited sci-fi thriller Gravity is in theaters right now, and critics have already judged it as a groundbreaking masterpiece. It currently sits at 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, and my own review was certainly laden with a few superlatives. The story is pretty simple, with George Clooney and Sandra Bullock as astronauts attempting to get home after being left adrift in deep space. But there is more to their journey than we get to see on the big screen, so if you don't want to have any part of the film spoiled it's probably a good idea to stop reading now.

Jonas Cuaron, Alfonso's son and co-writer, directed a short film titled Aningnaaq, which serves as a Gravity companion piece. At a certain point in the film, Bullock's character Dr. Ryan Stone is left alone and, while in a space station attempting to reach Mission Control, she ends up making contact with Aningnaaq (Orto Ignatiussen), an Inuit ice-fisher in Greenland. The two don't speak the same language, and all we really pick up on are the sounds of babies crying and dogs barking in the background, but Stone and Aningnaaq do end up communicating in a sense. It's one of the most touching moments in a film full of numerous triumphs.

The 7-minute film played at the Venice Film Festival, inexplicably in front of We're the Millers (!?!), and chances are those who saw it had no idea it was connected to Gravity.  While it won't be appearing on the big screen, we can expect the short to be a part of the Gravity DVD/Blu-Ray special features. Here's the official synopsis:

 Aningaaq, an Inuit fisherman camping on the ice over a frozen fjord, talks through a two way radio with a dying astronaut who is stranded in space, 500 kilometers above earth. Even though he doesn’t speak English and she doesn’t speak Greenlandic, they manage to have a conversation about dogs, babies, life and death. [RopesofSilicon]