Big Fish & Begonia

Big Fish & Begonia (2016) is a Chinese fantasy animation from Liang Xuan and Zhang Chun, and you can watch online on iFILM. Below the human world lives a magical race that governs the tides and the turning of the seasons. One of them, a girl named Chun, longs to see what's above.

At sixteen she's allowed a seven-day trip to the surface, transformed into a dolphin. A vortex nearly drowns her, and a human boy dies saving her life. Unable to let that stand, Chun strikes a bargain with the keeper of souls: half her own lifespan for the boy's tiny soul, which she must raise and shepherd back to the human realm. Her friend Qiu, quietly in love with her, keeps paying for the choices she makes.

The studio spent twelve years on this, and it shows — watercolor-soft landscapes, imagery pulled from Zhuangzi and Chinese folklore, a lush orchestral score. It's a mature, melancholy fairy tale about the cost of love, closer in spirit to Miyazaki than to anything cuddly from Disney. Stream Big Fish & Begonia (2016) online on iFILM.