Eva Lusbaronian’s Death of the Fish (La Mort du poisson) was one of two animated shorts selected this year for the 57th edition of the Directors’ Fortnight, a prestigious programming sidebar organized by the French Directors’ Guild that runs parallel to the Cannes Film Festival.
The 14-minute short produced by French powerhouse Miyu Productions premiered yesterday in Cannes, and today, Cartoon Brew is pleased to exclusively debut the film’s trailer, followed below by a discussion with the director.
Set in a rural cottage by a lakeside, Death of the Fish opens with a young girl discovering a haggard woman — perhaps her mother or an adult version of herself — lying despondently in the grass. The girl helps her rise, and soon they begin a quiet dance. Their union is abruptly disrupted when a stork appears and kills a fish, triggering a strange ritual performance that eventually leads toward a fleeting sense of calm and balance within the woman.
Death of the Fish is a powerful, mysterious, and meditative exploration of crippling depression and mental health. It’s clear that this is a deeply personal film addressing a number of sensitive issues.
“My family environment exposed me fairly early on to issues of mental health, the impact of trauma, and illness in general,” director Eva Lusbaronian told Cartoon Brew. “So I found myself deeply questioning the role of the caregiver: how to strike the right balance between supporting loved ones and not losing yourself in the process. At some point, though, I began to feel overwhelmed by my own emotions. I think I needed to re-invest that experience through an artistic form, both to better understand it and to make it shareable.”
Despite its weighty themes of depression, and hints of grief and loss, the film sustains a serene, contemplative atmosphere throughout. From its lush lakeside setting to the angelic acappella choral voices and liberating dance sequences, every element works together to guide the viewer and characters toward a momentary transcendence.
The soundtrack, by Pablo Pico with sound contributions from Flavien Van Haezevelde and Florian Fabre, is almost entirely composed of diegetic sound, with the exception of a nearly-entirely acapella performance that is at once spiritual, haunting, and deeply moving.
“At first, I didn’t envision any music at all,” said Lusbaronian. “I didn’t want something extradiegetic that would feel disconnected from the environment. I imagined that the forest and pond sounds could form a kind of natural rhythm. I was afraid that familiar instruments might bring overly obvious emotional cues. That left the voice, and using it felt like a way of giving sound to characters who otherwise don’t speak. I soon had the idea of a choir — one that could embody the Mother’s anxiety and her grieving doubles. It made audible something I had only tried to express through images and movement.”
It’s this rejection of language that also elevates the beauty and power of Death of the Fish. Rather than relying on dialogue, it lets its characters speak through movement, an approach that echoes Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, in which a character, frustrated by the meaninglessness of words, declares he’d rather remain silent than repeat the same old lines.
In this context, no amount of words could properly convey the complexity of depression without sounding cliché and melodramatic. Instead, the characters express their pain through motion and, specifically, dance.
“In my early concept notes, I wrote about the body taking over when words become too painful,” explained Lusbaronian. “A gesture can betray what the voice cannot say. That idea became central. I didn’t feel comfortable putting words to such a heavy topic — or maybe I simply didn’t feel capable of doing so without it sounding overly literal or flat. Instead, I wanted to create a kind of animated ballet. Dance, especially the dance-theater of Pina Bausch, seemed to me a more subtle and open form of expression. I wanted everyone to be able to see themselves in the story, since the subject is too complex to be reduced to any one personal example.”
Influenced by Bausch’s work, Lusbaronian, although not a choreographer, created storyboards and animatics envisioning each dance sequence. She explained how she approached that part of the process:
I knew the movement had to carry a lot of meaning to compensate for the absence of dialogue. I was incredibly fortunate to collaborate with Rainer Behr, Ditta Miranda Jasjfi, and Julie Shanahan from Tanztheater Wuppertal. I wrote intention notes for each piece, describing the project’s context and the characters. I also shared sketches and animatic excerpts. Rainer Behr served as my connection to the dancers, who really inhabited their roles. The first rehearsals already felt like we were on the right path, but when I visited Wuppertal and saw the finished performances, the whole film was there. It was profoundly emotional. The biggest challenge after that was editing — deciding how to incorporate their work meaningfully into the final structure.
In terms of direction, though, there was no real difficulty. “I couldn’t have hoped for better collaborators. We found a common language very naturally. I gave them space for interpretation and improvisation, which led to unexpected, powerful interactions between characters. That distance from my own ideas, letting them evolve through others, is something I really cherish about working in a team.”
Death of the Fish’s setting, in the quiet countryside, is strangely meditative. Some, like me, would associate moments of crippling depression with an unbearable cacophony of words and sounds, but it’s the opposite here. “For me, the pond was a kind of mirror, reflecting each character’s own inner anxieties,” admitted Lusbaronian. “It’s a space that can either push you forward or pull you under. Facing oneself is always a double-edged sword, and a seemingly peaceful environment can easily become oppressive. Still, I didn’t want to strip the film of all hope. Nature, after all, is cyclical and constantly changing; there are recurring losses, and just as many renewals. In some way, that forces a kind of optimism.”
The peak of the woman’s depression manifests in a strange ritualistic scene following the death of the fish. For this moment, the lines between reality and fantasy blur. The depression has completely taken over and curtained the woman’s perception of reality. The accompanying dance seems to momentarily expel her assorted traumas.
Refreshingly, the film does offer us a hint of optimism, but unlike so many works that approach mental illness, Death of a Fish avoids a tepid, easy exit. And that’s what makes the film even more powerful and honest.
There is a slight smile from the woman, suggesting that maybe she has emerged from the depression, but it is a very measured ending… because depression, of course, will visit again. “I don’t think there is such a thing as complete remission when it comes to mental illness, whether it’s depression, bipolar disorder, or anxiety. That’s where the ambiguity of those final scenes comes in. A happy ending would have felt dishonest to me, but there can still be joy, hope, and growth even in the midst of pain.”
