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Release date United Kingdom: TBA

Director: David Kaplan

Cast:

Tsai Chin ... Mrs. Su
Ken Leung ... Johnny
Randall Duk Kim ... Auntie Yaga / Old Man / Foreman
An Nguyen ... Ye Xian
Sally Leung Bayer ... Grandmother
Henry Russell Bergstein ... Hasidic Customer
Buzz Bovshow ... Businessman #2
Esther Cheng ... Salon Worker #3
Lori Tan Chinn ... Shuk Yee
Andre De Leon ... Thug
Kim Dong ... Salon Worker #5
Tina Duong ... Salon Worker #7
Wai Ching Ho ... Seamstress #2
Anna Kim ... Seamstress #1
Janet Lau ... Salon Worker #8
David Lee ... Fish Narration
Paul J.Q. Lee ... Wu
Lillian Leong ... Salon Worker #9
Bunny Levine ... Tourist Woman
Philip Levy ... Businessman #1

About:

In modern-day Cinderella adaptation "Year of the Fish," award-winning filmmaker David Kaplan transposes the fairytale's archetypical characters to a vibrant urban setting: a massage parlor in New York's Chinatown specializing in 'happy endings'.

An optimistic young girl travels alone to New York City where she hopes to earn money to send home to her ailing father. Expecting work in a beauty salon, the girl is instead delivered into the hands of her father’s distant cousin, an embittered woman who runs a seedy massage parlor. The girl surrenders her passport as collateral for her 'debt' and is informed of her duties. When she refuses to do the requisite sex work, the girl accepts her fate as the operation’s browbeaten servant, her only solace a magical goldfish given to her by a sidewalk fortuneteller.

Once the shooting and live-action editing were completed, the animation began. Following in the footsteps of Richard Linklater's "Waking Life" and "Scanner Darkly," the production was shot and edited on miniDV and then rotoscoped in post production to create a high-definition animated feature film. Kaplan's film, however, has a very different aesthetic than his precursors, less like the flat colors and clean lines of a graphic novel and more like a living, breathing painting brought to life. Some shots resemble watercolors; others look like oil paintings. The colors move and dance and spill into each other.

Genres:
Romance - Fantasy - Animation

Producers: Tevin Adelman, Rocco Caruso

Writers: David Kaplan