The Monk and the Fish

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The Monk and the Fish
Screenshot from The Monk and the Fish
Directed by	Michaël Dudok De Wit
Produced by	Patrick Eveno Jacques-Remy Girerd
Written by	Michaël Dudok De Wit
Music by	Serge Besset
Release date(s)	1994
Running time	6:20 minutes
Country	France
Language	no dialogue
IMDb profile

The Monk and the Fish (Moine et le poisson, Le) is an animated short film made by Michaël Dudok De Wit in 1994. It was nominated for Oscar, BAFTA Film Award for Best short animated film and won 3 others.

[edit] Story plot

Standing next to a water reservoir in a monastery enclave, a monk sees a fish and goes to get his net to catch it. The fish eludes him and the monk gets rather agitated as he tries increasingly extreme ways of catching the fish. He gets into the pond himself, and enlists the help of other monks; he tries candles, and a bow and arrow to no avail. The more the fish manages to evade him, the more obsessed the monk gets. He follows the fish out of the pond into a canal, through different landscapes and out of the confines of the monastery. Eventually the chase gets less frantic and the monk and the fish move in harmony. They float through a door into the open space and drift off into the sky together.

[edit] Miscellanies

The film was made using a cel animation technique; nowadays cel animation is often assisted by computers, but this has been made in the traditional way using brush, Indian ink, and watercolour.
The specially created music score, by Serge Besset, is based on La Follia by Corelli.