Fantastic Planet

Fantastic Planet
French release poster
FrenchLa Planète sauvage
Directed byRené Laloux
Written by
Based onOms en série
by Stefan Wul
Produced by
Narrated byJean Valmont
Cinematography
  • Boris Baromykin
  • Lubomir Rejthar
Edited by
  • Hélène Arnal
  • Marta Látalová
Music byAlain Goraguer
Production
companies
Les Films Armorial
Studio Jiri Trnka
Distributed byArgos Films (France)
Ceskoslovensky Film Export (Czechoslovakia)
Release dates
  • 11 May 1973 (1973-05-11) (Cannes)
  • 6 December 1973 (1973-12-06) (France)
  • 21 December 1973 (1973-12-21) (Czechoslovakia)
Running time
71 minutes
Countries
  • France
  • Czechoslovakia
LanguageFrench

Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète sauvage; Czech: Divoká planeta, lit.'The Wild Planet') is a 1973 animated science fiction film directed by René Laloux. Its allegorical story, about humans living on a strange planet dominated by giant humanoid aliens who consider them animals, is based on the 1957 novel Oms en série by the French writer Stefan Wul. The film was written by Laloux and Roland Topor; the latter also made the production design. It was an co-production between companies from France and Czechoslovakia and was animated at Jiří Trnka Studio in Prague.

A working title while in development was Sur la planète Ygam (On the Planet Ygam), which is where most of the story takes place; the actual title (The Fantastic/Savage Planet) is the name of Ygam's moon. Production began in 1963. Fantastic Planet was awarded the Grand Prix special jury prize at the 1973 Cannes Film Festival, and in 2016, it was ranked the 36th greatest animated movie ever by Rolling Stone.