Watch This Rare Sci-Fi Short From FANTASTIC PLANET Director René Laloux

René Laloux’s wild psychedelic masterpiece FANTASTIC PLANET is one of the most popular films we’ve ever shown at the AFS Cinema. The look and feel complement the old-school sci-fi paperback moral of Roland Topor’s story perfectly. American audiences are largely unfamiliar with the rest of Laloux’s filmography as it was not widely distributed in the States (and remains hard to find), even as other stoned French sci-fi and fantasy art garnered a strong following here by way of Heavy Metal magazine, the domestic counterpart of the French publication Métal Hurlant.

Laloux would mine the Métal Hurlant aesthetic by collaborating with two of the magazine’s core artists on his next several projects. The first was the 1982 space adventure TIME MASTERS, featuring art by the internationally-renowned Moebius – who also collaborated with Jodorowsky on his Incal graphic novels and made an indelible impression on a young Japanese animator named Hayao Miyazaki. For the rest of the 80s, Laloux formed a creative partnership with Philippe Caza, and together they produced the 1988 feature GANDAHAR, and two shorts, HOW WANG FO WAS SAVED (1987) and the surreal LA PRISONNIERE (1988), which we present here for your enjoyment.