Fear of the Past

Director Alfonso Cuaron's Gravity stars Sandra Bullock as Dr. Ryan Stone, a scientist on a space shuttle mission headed by astronaut Matt Kowalsky (George Clooney), a talkative, charismatic leader full of colorful stories that he shares with his crewmates as well as mission control. As the two are on a space walk, debris hits the area where they are working, and soon the pair finds themselves detached from their ship and stranded in space. While figuring out what steps they can take to save themselves, Stone grapples with a painful past that makes her consider giving up altogether. Gravity screened at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi
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Cuaron's spiel on the importance of character in film:

In Gravity nearly everything is a metaphor for the main character. The way I tend to approach a film is that character and background are equally important; one informs the other. Here, Sandra Bullock is caught between Earth and the void of the universe, just floating there in between. We use the debris as a metaphor for adversity. She’s a character who lives in her own bubble, and in the film she’s trapped in her space suit. She’s a character who has trouble communicating, and here she literally starts having communication problems. She’s a character who needs to shed her skin to move on, and in the film she needs to get out of her astronaut suit because it’s suffocating her. In the end, the story is about rebirth as a possible outcome of adversity. Full interview with Wired.com