THE FISH TALE

Official Selection, 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival

TV show host Meebo has had a life-long obsession with sea creatures, spending school days reading a fish encyclopedia, visiting the aquarium octopus, and drawing detailed crustaceans instead of paying attention in class. One day, after fishing a whole octopus out of the ocean and intending to keep it as a pet, Meebo’s father brutally kills it, serving it beachside in skinny tentacle skewers. A charming encounter with a fellow fish enthusiast ignites Meebo’s dream to become a “fish expert.”

Loosely based on the life of celebrity marine biologist Sakana-kun and shot according to the dictum “fish first, people second,” THE FISH TALE follows Meebo’s sometimes-flailing pursuit of this dream. Meebo drifts from failed job to failed job (at a sea park, at a sushi bar), struggling to figure out how to build a career around a passion for fish. “It was too low-key and geeky,” a fish store owner says when Meebo constructs an aquarium full of barely perceptible, camouflaged fish for a dentist’s office lobby (and is quickly fired). THE FISH TALE is a spirited homage to creatures of the deep—and the misfits, artists, and wayward spirits who dare to make it in the big ocean.

—Kim-Anh Schreiber