Feb 9, 2016

Watch Academy Award Nominated "We Can-t Live Without Cosmos" Premieres Online

Russian filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit's festival favorite "We Can't Live Without Cosmos" is available online for the first time today via The New Yorker's Screening Room series.

The Academy Award-nominated 15-minute short, which also won last year's Annecy Crystal Award for Best Short, can be seen below:

Bronzit told The New Yorker, "My film is not about space exploration and is only partly about friendship. It is about loneliness. It is about the close connections between people. If we are to survive in human society, sometimes we have to go out into another place, an open space where we can really breathe deeply and freely.

The film is the first of this year's Oscar nominees for Best Short Film to be made freely available online (Don Hertzfeldt's "World of Tomorrow" has been available on Vimeo's VOD since last spring).

Bronzit's decision to officially release the film online is interesting in light of the recent fight against film piracy in Russia. Cosmos was uploaded to the Internet in Russia and spread like wildfire on VKontakte, the country's largest social network.

Bronzit appealed to Russian viewers via social media last month to stop the unauthorized distribution of his short film because it was "killing" its chances of screening at film festivals. 'If it doesn't screen at festivals, the film will remain in obscurity,' he said. Please save my film and my four years of work."

Bronzit was previously nominated for an Academy Award in 2009 for his short film Lavatory-Lovestory. He also directed the critically acclaimed short film At the Ends of the Earth.