Peixes
2017 · 6m · España
Directed by Juan Carlos Peña
Genres: animation, family, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, mythic, whimsical
In a small cave at the bottom of the sea, an old fish tells a group of young fish the ancient legend of a fish that longed to know what lay on the surface, beyond the water. The tale feeds curiosity about the world above.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a fable, sure, but the real subversion is that it *knows* it's a fable—there's no wink, no deconstruction, just pure mythic commitment in a medium most people waste on safe children's content. That refusal to be clever about sincerity is almost radical.
Peixes sits comfortably within the animation tradition of philosophical fables (think Halas & Batchelor, early Studio Ghibli), but the restraint in its visual language and the deliberate pacing of revelation through nested storytelling shows a filmmaker aware of exactly which lineage she's working in and why it matters.
The entire film hinges on the decision to keep the surface world *unseen*—that choice to let curiosity live in absence rather than spectacle is what transforms a simple story about wanting to explore into something genuinely haunting and singular.