WATCH: Oscar-Nominated ‘We Can’t Live Without Cosmos’ Premieres Online

Russian filmmaker Konstantin Bronzit’s festival favorite We Can’t Live Without Cosmos was made available online for the first time today, via The New Yorker’s Screening Room series.

The 15-minute Oscar-nominated short, which also won the Annecy Cristal for short film last year, can be viewed below:

Bronzit told the New Yorker, “My film is not about the space program, and it is just partly about friendship. It’s about loneliness. About the very close links between people. About our inability to live in human society without exiting, sometimes, to a different area, an open space where we can really breathe deeply and freely.”

It is the first of this year’s Oscar-nominated shorts to be made freely available online (Don Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow has been available through Vimeo’s VOD since last spring.)

Bronzit’s decision to officially make the film available online is interesting in light of his recent struggles with film piracy in Russia. Cosmos was uploaded to the Internet in Russia and has spread like wildfire over that country’s largest social network, VKontakte.

Bronzit appealed to Russian viewers last month over social media to stop unauthorized distribution of his short because it was “killing” his film’s festival prospects. “Without festival play, the film will just go into obscurity,” he wrote. “Save my film and my work of four years.”

Bronzit was previously nominated for an Oscar in 2009 for his short Lavatory—Lovestory. He also directed the much-lauded short At the Ends of the Earth.