Andriy Melnyk has a rather unusual job: hauling nuclear waste from Earth to a moon of Jupiter. His days aboard a cargo spaceship are spent listening to old records, putting up with an endlessly joking robot named Maksym and counting down the months until he can return home. Then, without warning, Earth explodes. Andriy finds himself alone in the vastness of space, with no destination and apparently no one left to talk to.
Just as he begins to accept his fate, an unexpected message breaks the silence. Somewhere out there, another voice is reaching for him. What begins as a fragile connection gradually gives Andriy something he thought he had lost: a reason to look forward. But in a universe of impossible distances, even the simplest human wish can become an extraordinary undertaking.
In his feature debut, director Pavlo Ostrikov finds humour and tenderness in the most unlikely of settings. With its retro-futuristic spaceship, Ukrainian pop songs and a robot whose jokes rarely land, U ARE THE UNIVERSE is a gently absurd, deeply human story about loneliness, longing and the courage to reach beyond one’s own little world.