Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000 (1962): cast, story & where to watch

Released in 1962, Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000 is a documentary film directed by Jean Cocteau, running about 25 minutes.

What it’s about. Just a couple of months before his death, in August 1963, he made one last film: a 25-minute short entitled Jean Cocteau s’adresse à l’an 2000 (Cocteau addresses the year 2000). The film comprises one still and highly sober shot of Cocteau facing the camera head-on to address the youth of the future. Once recorded, this spoken message for the 21st century was wrapped up, sealed and posted on the understanding that it would be opened only in the year 2000 (as it turned out, it was discovered and exhumed a few years shy of that date). If in The Testament Cocteau portrays himself as a living anachronism, a lonesome classical modernist loitering in space-time in the same buckskin jacket and tie while lost in the spectral light of his memories, here he acknowledges explicitly the irony of his phantom-like state: by the time the viewer sees this image, he, J. C., our saviour Poet, will long be dead.

Who’s in it. Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000 stars Jean Cocteau as Self.

How it landed. With an audience score of 6.5/10, Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000 has drawn a solid, mixed-to-positive response.

Where to watch. Streaming options change often. See the full, country-by-country breakdown on our where to watch Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000 page.

If you liked it. Fans of Jean Cocteau Addresses the Year 2000 tend to enjoy One Direction: This Is Us, Burn the Stage: The Movie, BTS World Tour: Love Yourself - Japan Edition and Senna.