I Lost My Body

I Lost My Body (J'ai perdu mon corps) is a 2019 French animated film directed by Jérémy Clapin. It was 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.

Plot
A severed hand escapes the lab it is being held in and begins a harrowing journey back to its body, belonging to a young man, Naoufel. As a boy, Naoufel aspired to be both a pianist and an astronaut, and enjoyed recording his day-to-day life on a tape recorder. However, after he loses both of his parents in a car accident, he is forced to live with his emotionally distant uncle and his crude cousin. Now an adult, Naoufel skates by as a pizza deliveryman, though he is criticized by his boss for constantly being late. During one delivery, Naoufel delivers a late pizza to a young woman, Gabrielle, at her apartment. Though they never see each other (as Naoufel is unable to get through the lobby's security door), they have a long conversation, and Naoufel quickly becomes infatuated with her.

Naoufel tracks Gabrielle down, but when he finally reaches the library where she works, he is too nervous to introduce himself. After she leaves work, he follows her to a neighborhood where she drops off medicine to a carpenter, Gigi. After being noticed, Naoufel notices a nearby want ad for an apprentice, and pretends to have come to take up the position. The terminally ill Gigi is at first reluctant to take on an apprentice, but accepts after he learns that Naoufel is an orphan. Naoufel moves out of his uncle's house and spends time learning his trade and getting closer to Gabrielle, though he keeps his real identity a secret. In the present day, the severed hand continues its journey, evading a blind man and his aggressive service dog and encountering a baby (one of the only characters to notice it).

During one conversation at the library, Naoufel checks out a book about Antarctica, and Gabrielle wonders what it'd be like to be in an igloo. One night on the apartment's roof, Naoufel asks Gabrielle if she believes in fate. When she gives a pessimistic response, he argues that you can change your fate by doing something unconventional, such as leaping off the ledge onto the crane that is a few feet away from them. Eventually Naoufel uses his newfound carpentry skills to build a makeshift igloo for Gabrielle, which pleases her. However, he then reveals his identity as the pizza deliveryman; upset, Gabrielle misinterprets his intentions and rejects him, leaving Naoufel hurt and dejected. One morning at work, Naoufel is alone and working on a project when his watch gets caught in a large saw, severing his hand. Eventually, the severed hand reaches Naoufel while he is asleep, but it is unable to reattach itself to his arm.

Naoufel, depressed and hopeless, revisits his old tape recorder, which still has recordings of his parents -- including the car ride before the accident. Sometime later, he leaves his apartment, and Gabrielle visits the empty room. After visiting the roof, Gabrielle finds his old, abandoned tape recorder. She discovers a new recording on it, one where Naoufel leaped off the ledge one night onto the crane as they had once discussed. In a flashback to that night, Naoufel realizes that he does not have to be a victim of fate and smiles to himself as he looks out at the city. His severed hand, realizing that Naoufel does not need it, retreats into the snow.

Release
In May 2019, following its Cannes premiere, Netflix acquired the worldwide distribution rights to the film, excluding France, Turkey, China and the Benelux region.

Netflix released the film in cinemas in some countries during 29 November 2019, including in the United States on 15 November and in the United Kingdom on 22 November.