No Movie This Year Will Make You Cry Like ‘Robot Dreams’

If you heard the film Robot Dreams be called among the five Best Animated Feature nominees at this year’s Oscars ceremony and said, “What the hell is that?” you are not alone. This intrepid little movie, directed by Spanish filmmaker Pablo Berger, has taken its sweet time making its way to the United States. After premiering to raves at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Robot Dreams slowly trickled down through a few other festivals and had a brief, under-the-radar Oscar-qualifying run in the US. But the film’s distributor, Neon, didn’t get it widely in front of stateside eyes before the Oscars, leaving many to question their release strategy and go so far as to claim they bungled the movie’s momentum entirely.

While there’s merit to the question of whether or not the film could’ve been bigger with a different approach to its release, they fall by the wayside once you’re seated in front of Robot Dreams, which draws you in from its opening shots of a vividly illustrated 1980s New York City. Here, a bipedal canine named Dog languishes inside his apartment, channel surfing between playing rounds of Pong. The glow of his television distracts him from his window, where he can glimpse other animal couples and friends enjoying their time together. When Dog spots a TV ad for a mail-order mechanical friend named Robot, he jumps at the chance for some companionship, and Robot Dreams’ sweet story takes off.

Where this dialogue-free animated film can take you in just 102 minutes is nothing short of masterful. The movie is a feat of sight and sound, with delightful foley work and a beautifully composed score keeping its pacing at a pleasant stroll. It’s because the movie has no dialogue that it’s even more potent. Robot Dreams aims for your soul with a story that transcends language; its hard-hitting emotional moments don’t come from words but from actions. It may be trite to say that love is the one tongue everyone can understand, but that doesn’t make it any less true, and the film finds splendid new ways to illustrate this. And while it’s not all cheerful, Robot Dreams’ sadder moments make this whimsical friendship story all the more real.

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