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Although the story takes place in a vaguely futuristic Shanghai where humans co-exist with mermaids (called that way even though they look rather like giant fish), the picture spends little time on worldbuilding. Instead, it focuses on its main character, Stephan, a rather average low-level office employee working for a megalomaniac shipbuilding tycoon. Stephan has dreams of designing a flying machine, but what good could that be for a company specialising in seafaring? One day, the mermaid king\u2019s daughter, Chao, publicly announces her love for Stephan \u2013 even though they have never even met. This plunges our hapless hero into a highly publicised whirlwind...<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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ChaO<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Directed by:\u00a0Yasuhiro Aoki<\/strong><\/strong> Age category: 16+<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Was born in 1968 in Japan. A veteran animator currently at Tokyo-based Studio4\u00b0C, he previously co-directed Batman: Gotham Knight and The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim (2024), Steamboy (2004) contributed animation to Psycho-Pass: The Movie \u2014 atmospheric and moody features that worked with shadows and darkness. Aoki has swum against that tide for his latest feature ChaO, which ushers in bright colors and kinetic visuals. \u201cWhen I embark on a new project, I like to do something that is the complete opposite of what I did previously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Indisputably the standout of the Asian selection at the 2025 Annecy Animated Film Festival, \u201cChaO\u201d won the second-highest award there and proved to be a crowd-pleaser. The film is a wacky mix of zany comedy and heartfelt drama, set against the backdrop of a timely ecological parable. Although the story takes place in a vaguely […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":28744,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[1940,1966,2084,254,2078],"class_list":["post-28746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-recommended-movies","tag-32-iff-etiudaanima","tag-32-mff-etiudaanima-en","tag-chao","tag-recommended-movies","tag-recommended-movies-2025"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28811,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28746\/revisions\/28811"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/etiudaandanima.pl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Music: Takatsugu Muramatsu<\/strong><\/strong>
Production: Eiko Tanaka, STUDIO4\u00b0C CO., LTD.<\/strong><\/strong>
Country:\u00a0Japan<\/strong>
Year:\u00a02025<\/strong>
Running time:\u00a089 min.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
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<\/p>\n\n\n\nYasuhiro Aoki<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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