GO FISHBOY
2022 · 6m · France
Directed by Denise Cirone, Sebastian Doringer, Andrey Kolesov, Chiayu Liu, Zhen Tian, Lan Zhou
Genres: animation, coming-of-age, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, surreal, tender
In Tokyo, respected sushi chef Takeshi Asami expects his silent 13-year-old son Uotaro to continue the family legacy, but the boy's strange fish-like behavior forces both father and son through an unexpected change.
Picked by Zoe
The scouts
Six directors collaborating on a film about a kid who literally becomes fish—that's either a disaster or a manifesto, and Cirone et al. somehow made it both, which is exactly the kind of beautiful mess everyone else passes on.
The film positions itself against the rigidity of tradition (the sushi dynasty, the father's expectations) through formal fluidity in its animation, creating a visual argument about inheritance that feels quietly philosophical without announcing itself.
The entire piece hinges on that single choice to make Uotaro's 'strangeness' literal rather than metaphorical—that one decision transforms what could've been a generic coming-of-age into something that trusts the audience to sit with genuine weirdness as tenderness.
Reviews
We experience his inner process by seeing him in absurd situations and adopting "fishy" behaviors. By the end after finally communicating with his father, we see how they both have come to a point of no return and we realize that it was not only Uotaro who has been going through a change, but also his father.