I Lost My Body

I Lost My Body is a 2019 French adult animated fantasy drama film directed by , based on the novel Happy Hand by Guillaume Laurant. It premiered in the International Critics' Week section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Nespresso Grand Prize, becoming the first animated film to do so in the section's history. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature at the 92nd Academy Awards, but lost to Toy Story 4. Plot A severed hand escapes from a refrigerator in a laboratory and begins a journey across the suburbs of Paris to reunite with its body, Naoufel. His story is told via flash-backs. Being very little in Morocco, Naoufel aspires to be a pianist and an astronaut and records his day-to-day life on a tape recorder. During a car journey, he distracts his father while he is driving, causing a crash. He survives, but both of his parents are killed. He is forced to live in France with his emotionally distant uncle and his crude cousin. Now, Naoufel works as a pizza deliveryman, often criticized by his boss for being late. On one occasion, Naoufel delivers a pizza to Gabrielle, at her apartment block. They never see each other, as Naoufel is unable to get through the lobby's malfunctioning security door, but have a conversation through the intercom, and Naoufel becomes infatuated with her and is ready to make everything in order to seduce her. Naoufel tracks Gabrielle to the library where she works and follows her to a near-by neighborhood where she drops off medicine to a carpenter, her uncle Gigi. Naoufel, seeing an ad for an apprentice in the window, quickly uses this as an excuse for why he is there. Gigi is reluctant but accepts after learning that Naoufel is an orphan. Naoufel moves out of his uncle's house and into an attic apartment provided by Gigi. He learns the tools of the trade and edges closer to Gabrielle, though he never mentions their first encounter.