THE WALKING FISH - THESSA MEIJER (2018)

Written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Thessa Meijer, but set in Japan, The Walking Fish is pitched as a "tragicomic short film about ambition", but to me it is simply a contemporary fairy tale. It centres on Mutsumi, a normal mudskipper (walking fish), who is taken home by a boy and starts turning into a human (evolution at hyper-speed). How or why this happens is glossed over like the best of fairy tales but Mutsumi is soon looking pretty human. However, she has to work extra hard to become perfectly human and can never escape her origins. There can only be one outcome. Nicely made, without most of the wink-wink pretentiousness (except it starts in 4:3 and there is one awkward zoom) found in so many recent short films, it was the Dutch Oscar submission, If you like The Walking Fish by Thessa Meijer be sure to rate it and share it.