Fish Tank
Fish Tank | dir. Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan
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CineAsian Films
NARRATIVE SHORT

MAY 28, 2024

USA | 18 minutes | 2023

Drama short film directed by Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan

Starring Susan Elle, Heidi Mendéz, Adam Brock, Danielle Degrasse-Alston

Fish Tank

Cleo arrives from a trip home back to Los Angeles, only to discover a recent eviction. She found her belongings scattered around the street, along with her pet goldfish. Acting out of anxiety and fear, she abandons her goldfish. However, her goldfish haunts her as she moves on with the day seeking an asylum under different roofs.

Director’s Statement

I lost my goldfish, Olympo, to parasites in December 2020, and to cope, I wrote prose named “To Break Up with a Goldfish.” Writing proses is a habit of mine that I took on to battle anxiety, and in the prose, I explored the internal struggles of feeling displaced in a stranger’s country, of separating from something that they care for, and the subconscious fear of leaving someone behind. The prose became the initial story for Fish Tank.

Fish Tank is a meditative response to displacement and isolation/loneliness that arise from the past years when we were swept by the pandemic, the wars, the inflation, and all the hardship that ensues.

I seek to convey the message of “moving on” as a leap of faith. I really wanted to encourage everyone who went through this shared trauma that, like that old Chinese idiom, “no prairie fire can destroy the weeds; they reroot with the spring breeze.”

– Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan

Fish Tank is one of the many great projects shared with CineAsian Films through our submissions process. If you’d like to join them, submit your project.

Credits

Director, Writer: Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan

Producers: Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan, Juan Cortés, Yuky Shen (co-producer), Camila Mendoza Dukón (associate producer), Kathleen I-Ying Lee (associate producer)

Cinematographer: Siru Wen

Editors: Sunyin Zhang, Yimeng “Yuki” Yuan

Composer: Juan Cortés