Fantastic Planet
1973 animated film directed by René Laloux
Fantastic Planet (French: La Planète Sauvage; Czech: Divoká planeta, lit. 'The Wild Planet') is a 1973 surrealist adult animated science fiction art 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 a 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.
Plot summary
In the distant future, the giant blue humanoid Draags have brought human beings (who are called Oms) from Earth to the planet Ygam, where the Draags maintain a technologically and spiritually advanced society. The Draags consider Oms animals, and while they keep some as pets, others live in the wilderness and are periodically slaughtered by the Draags to control their population. Draags have much longer lifespans than Oms, but reproduce much less.
The public source identifies “Fantastic Planet” as 1973 animated film directed by René Laloux. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Fantastic, Planet and animated.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q477687. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1957, 1963 and 2016.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fantastic Planet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.