Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth is a 2020 British animated short, directed by Philip Hunt and adapted from Oliver Jeffers's best-selling picture book, that turns a seven-year-old's questions about the world into a thirty-six-minute guided tour of the planet.
What is Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth about?
The day before Earth Day, a bright and endlessly curious seven-year-old wants to understand where he actually lives. His parents do their best, explaining land and sea, day and night, animals and people, and the small courtesies that keep everyone getting along. Then a visit to a place called the Museum of Everything opens a stranger door. Inside, an exhibit seems to hold the entire planet at once, and the boy's questions grow larger with every room he wanders through. What begins as a child's bedtime curiosity becomes a gentle set of notes on how to be a newcomer on a crowded, beautiful, fragile world.
About the cast
The voice cast is led by Meryl Streep, with Jacob Tremblay, Chris O'Dowd, Ruth Negga and Rob Rackstraw rounding out the ensemble. The short relies on narration and warm family dialogue rather than spectacle, so the voices carry a large share of its tone, from parental patience to a child's open-mouthed wonder.
Context & significance
Oliver Jeffers wrote the original book as a letter to his newborn son, and the adaptation keeps that address intact: the planet is explained from scratch, as if to someone who has only just arrived. Philip Hunt directs, and the production is British, released in 2020 and timed around Earth Day. At thirty-six minutes it sits between a traditional short and a feature, long enough for a full story arc yet short enough for a single sitting with young children. The visual style follows Jeffers's illustrations closely, with soft shapes, broad colour fields and the hand-drawn feel that made the book a bedtime staple in many households. It is listed in the catalogue under animation and short film, and its subject matter, caring for the planet and for one another, is the same gentle civics lesson the book offered. For families in the Persian-speaking diaspora, it is the kind of title that works across generations: grandparents, parents and small children can watch it together without anyone needing a plot summary first.
Watching Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth on Ktime
Here We Are: Notes for Living on Planet Earth streams on K-Time with a free account login. The K-Time interface is fully available in Farsi, which makes browsing simple for Persian-speaking households even when a title itself plays in English. This short is presented in its original English audio without a Persian dub or Persian subtitles, so it suits viewers comfortable with English or families watching alongside a child who is learning the language. The film page is free to read; pressing play requires signing in.