Synopsis

An animated traveler leaves home and undertakes a dangerous journey across continents, separated from the people and places he loves. Along the way, ordinary means of transport become imaginative rocket ships, transforming a refugee's passage into an interstellar adventure. The traveler faces isolation, uncertainty and fear, yet keeps moving toward the hope of finding safety and a new home. The video recasts Elton John's astronaut as a metaphor for displacement, making the song's loneliness and longing feel immediate and human.

Factoids & Trivia

• "Rocket Man" was released in 1972, years before music videos became a standard part of pop promotion. Its first official music video arrived in 2017.

• The video was created through Elton John's The Cut competition, launched to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his songwriting partnership with Bernie Taupin. The contest also produced new official videos for "Tiny Dancer" and "Bennie and the Jets."

• "Rocket Man" was assigned to the animation category. The finished film uses watercolor textures, rough linework and dreamlike transformations rather than a conventional live-action narrative.

• The story draws on the real experiences of an Iranian refugee who traveled through Europe during the 2015 refugee crisis, spent time in the Calais Jungle and later reached the United Kingdom.

• The central rocket is deliberately flexible in meaning. It can suggest a boat, truck, train or any other vehicle carrying someone toward an uncertain future.

• The video's emotional focus is consistent with the original song's themes of distance and loneliness, but its refugee perspective gives those ideas a new social and political context.

• The video premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017.