A Fish Out of Water
A Fish Out of Water (上岸的鱼) is a 2017 Taiwanese drama feature directed and written by Lai Kuo-An (赖国安), his debut feature film, about a kindergartner who asks his parents to help him find his parents from a past life while his own family is coming apart.1 • 2 It premiered at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival in the Discovery section and competed for the New Director award at the 65th San Sebastian International Film Festival.3
| Key fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Original title | 上岸的鱼 (Shang an de yu); also known in Chinese as 后花园4 |
| Director and writer | Lai Kuo-An (赖国安), a former music-video and commercial director; his first feature1 • 2 |
| Production | Swallow Wings Films (Taiwan); producers include Hsu Chao-Jen, Gene Yao, and Albert Yao1 • 3 |
| Runtime | 91 minutes per Taiwan Cinema and San Sebastian; 90 minutes per the Toronto program and Pingyao catalog3 • 5 |
| Languages | Mandarin and Taiwanese (Taigi)3 |
| Taiwan release | March 16, 20186 |
| Principal cast | Run-yin Bai (Zhang Yi-An), Peggy Tseng (Wu Ya-Ji), Jen-Shuo Cheng (Zhang Hao-Teng), Akio Chen (Zhang Fu)6 |
| Festivals | Toronto 2017 (Discovery), San Sebastian 2017 (New Directors competition), San Diego Asian Film Festival, Asia Pacific Screen Awards, Filmfest Hamburg, Pingyao, Bologna Asian Film Festival3 • 7 |
Spoilers
Story
Yi-An, a boy just starting kindergarten, repeatedly asks his parents to take him to find the parents of his past life. He describes specific events, places, and people, including a former home by the sea in Toyama, and distinguishes clearly between past-life and present-life memories. Doctors and his parents conclude he may be suffering from psychosis.3 • 8
The parents' marriage is strained at the same time. His father Haoteng has inherited the family's water-fried bun shop, and his mother Yaji works as a real-estate agent; the couple lives with Yi-An and Haoteng's father. The two disagree over how to handle the boy: Haoteng wants medical treatment so the child will forget as he grows, while Yaji refuses to let him become a research subject and wants to visit the past-life home herself. When Haoteng's father suffers a stroke, Haoteng takes on his long-term care alone after Yaji moves out with Yi-An, and the boy's past-life memories grow more frequent as his parents' relationship deteriorates.8
After Yi-An runs away and the family reunites at a police station, and after the grandfather's death, the couple attempts to reconcile and sets out together to help Yi-An find his past-life parents. The film's title refers to its opening image: the three find a fish dead on the shore, an impossible presence from which the story unfolds.3 • 8
Production and director
Lai Kuo-An worked in music videos and commercials before turning to screenwriting; the Pingyao International Film Festival catalog notes that he won Taiwan's Culture Ministry screenplay award twice, and that A Fish Out of Water is his first feature film.2 The Toronto festival program credits Hsu Chih-Chun as cinematographer, Lin Zih-Sian among the editors, and Ke Jhih-Hao as composer,5 while the San Sebastian page credits Blaire Ko for music; the two sources disagree on the composer credit. International sales were handled by Charades of Paris according to San Sebastian,1 and by Swallow Wings Films according to Taiwan Cinema.3
Reception and release
The film was released in Taiwan on March 16, 2018.6 The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute records a theatrical screening period from March 10 to April 8, 2018, with box office of NT$770,902.8 It was also screened at the first Taiwan Film Festival in Bangkok in January 2018, where the program described it as portraying the complexity of domestic relationships.9
Audience ratings have been modest: Douban lists 5.6 out of 10 from 330 users,4 and IMDb lists 6.5 out of 10 from 78 users.6 Critics responded more favorably to the film's tone. Guy Lodge of Variety called it a loosely woven brain-teaser with a creepingly intense emotional undertow and a confident first feature,10 and the Toronto program described it as a film on family and the meaning and value of memories that stays on the border of the familiar and the supernatural.5 At the 65th San Sebastian festival Lai received a Best New Director nomination, and the film was nominated for Most Popular Film in the New Generation China section of the first Pingyao International Film Festival.4
Other films of the same name
The title has been used by several unrelated works. A 2026 British animated short directed by Matthew Creed, written by Robert Lancey and Andrew Weltch, follows a chronicler of the extraordinary who hears the tales of three sailors in an 1890s seaside town; it is scheduled for release in the United Kingdom on August 3, 2026.11 A 2019 Italian short documentary about the origins of bacalà, dried codfish, directed by Riccardo Vencato and Stefano Pellizzaro, has also circulated under the title.12 The phrase itself is a common English idiom for a person who is uncomfortably out of place, and it appears frequently as a descriptor in film criticism.13
References
- A Fish Out of Water, 2017 New Directors, San Sebastian Film Festival
- A Fish Out of Water, Pingyao International Film Festival Catalogue 2017
- A Fish Out of Water 上岸的魚, Taiwan Cinema
- 上岸的魚 (2017), Douban
- A Fish Out of Water, 2017 Toronto International Film Festival Programme Book
- A Fish Out of Water (2017), IMDb
- 15th Asian Film Festival 2018, Bologna
- 電影｜上岸的魚, Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute digital museum
- Opening of First Taiwan Film Festival in Bangkok 2018, Ministry of Culture
- A Fish Out of Water (2017), Rotten Tomatoes
- A Fish Out of Water (Short 2026), IMDb
- A Fish Out of Water, documentary at ICFF
- Movie Review: The Amateur, Associated Press
Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026
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