Deep Sea (Schools)

Heed the call of the waves and dive headfirst into this innovative and visually resplendent Chinese animation.

Abandoned by her mother, Shenxiu is struggling with a deep sadness when she’s shipped off to sea with her emotionally absent father and his new wife and child. One day, during a wild storm, Shenxiu is washed overboard. She awakens in a wondrous underwater world, where, guided by a ‘hyjinx’ – a mystical, shape-shifting creature she knows from her mum’s songs – and accompanied by the motley crew of a subaquatic restaurant, Shenxiu embarks on an incredible odyssey to find the Eye of the Deep Sea … and, potentially, her missing mother too.

Director Tian Xiaopeng broke Chinese box office records with his previous animated hit, Monkey King: Hero Is Back, and looks set to do so again with Deep Sea, thanks in part to its truly stunning visuals – the result of an animation technique Tian calls “particle ink”. Inspired by the Tang Dynasty ink washes that popularised the freehand brushwork style known as xieyi, this uniquely 21st-century method of animation layers billions of specks of ‘digital dust’ per scene to render its 3D creations. The effect is softer and more fluid than the hyper-realism favoured by 3D filmmakers such as James Cameron, resulting in vibrant, dreamlike visuals that blur and flow together in a kaleidoscope of colours and motion.