Lost in Starlight Review: How love and grief transcend the cosmos

"Out here in space, there's someone who's always rooting for you."

When characters travel to space, it's usually fuelled by the human instinct to survive.

The perseverance of humanity depends on a space mission to escape or cure an uninhabitable, dying Earth. We've seen it in past films like Interstellar and Mickey 17, and we'll continue seeing it in future productions like the 2026 adaptation of Project Hail Mary. However, in Netflix's very first South Korean-produced animated feature, Lost in Starlight, the near-future portrayal of Seoul is anything but apocalyptic.

Lost in Starlight is one of those gems that gets quietly released to streaming with little to no promotion, leaving it to fend for itself beneath the shadow of competing projects. It's a genre-bending film about Nan-young (voiced by Kim Tae-ri), a young scientist and astronaut, who dreams of exploring space and reconnecting with her mother, who died during a mission to Mars. But when Nan-young meets Jay (voiced by Hong Kyung), a nervous emerging musician, the stakes of her journey heighten as their romance grows.

In an interview for The Hollywood Reporter, director and illustrator Han Ji-won describes her intention of conceptualising a hopeful future in her film. It's one where, instead of being a doomed apocalyptic era, the Earth has been taken care of to the best of our ability. This "futuristic optimism", as she calls it, shines not only in the animation's dreamy, techno landscapes but also in the central romance, which takes long-distance relationships to an otherworldly level.

In its grounding themes of love, trust, and sending messages to the stars in the hope that they'll be received, Lost in Starlight is reminiscent of Christopher Nolan's 2014 hit, Interstellar. While Interstellar is an action-packed epic that traverses galaxies and dimensions, Lost in Starlight's impact is found in its narrative restraint. Humanity might not be on the brink of extinction in this animation, but through its characters' courageous acts — both beyond Earth and their internal fears — the narrative still leads to a devastatingly stunning concluding act.

Even though it takes some time to warm up to its understated characters and holographic style, Lost in Starlight is a cinematic achievement that is easily comparable to revered anime like Your Name from Makoto Shinkai. It is a visually breathtaking film that packs a startling punch in its final twenty minutes. But aside from its striking aesthetic, this is a story about the power of love and grief to transcend all obstacles, even if those obstacles are of the cosmic kind.

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