Andrea Arnold

Fish Tank

Fish Tank

British director Andrea Arnold won the Cannes Jury Prize for the intense and invigorating Fish Tank, about a fifteen-year-old girl, Mia (electrifying newcomer Katie Jarvis), who lives with her mother and sister in the housing projects of Essex. Mia’s adolescent conflicts and emerging sexuality reach a boiling point when her mother’s new boyfriend (a lethally attractive Michael Fassbender) enters the picture. In her young career, Arnold has already proven herself to be a master of social realism, evoking the work of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach; and she invests her sympathetic portraits of dead-end lives with a poetic, earthy sensibility all her own. Fish Tank heralds the official arrival of a major new filmmaker.

Film Info

  • United Kingdom
  • 2009
  • 122 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.33:1
  • English
  • Spine #553

Special Features

  • Director-approved digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Three short films by director Andrea Arnold: Milk (1998), Dog (2001), and the Oscar-winning Wasp (2003)
  • New video interview with actor Kierston Wareing
  • Audio conversation with actor Michael Fassbender from 2009
  • Audition footage
  • Stills gallery by set photographer Holly Horner
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ian Christie

    New cover by Jason Hardy

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • Director-approved digital transfer, with DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack on the Blu-ray edition
  • Three short films by director Andrea Arnold: Milk (1998), Dog (2001), and the Oscar-winning Wasp (2003)
  • New video interview with actor Kierston Wareing
  • Audio conversation with actor Michael Fassbender from 2009
  • Audition footage
  • Stills gallery by set photographer Holly Horner
  • Original theatrical trailer
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: An essay by film scholar Ian Christie

    New cover by Jason Hardy
Fish Tank
Cast
Katie Jarvis
Mia
Michael Fassbender
Connor
Kierston Wareing
Joanne
Rebecca Griffiths
Tyler
Harry Treadaway
Billy
Sydney Mary Nash
Keira
Carrie-Ann Savill
Tyler's friends
Toyin Ogidi
Grant Wild
Keeley's dad
Sarah Bayes
Keeley
Jack Gordon
Billy's brothers
Jason Maza
Michael Prior
Connor's friend
Sarah Counsell
Social worker
Joanna Horton
Kelly
Credits
Director
Andrea Arnold
Screenplay
Andrea Arnold
Producer
Kees Kasander
Coproducer
Nick Laws
Executive producers
Christine Langan
Executive producers
David M. Thompson (BBC Films)
Executive producers
Paul Trijbits (Ruby Films)
Director of photography
Robbie Ryan
Editing
Nicolas Chaudeurge
Production design
Helen Scott
Casting
Jill Trevellick
Costume designer
Jane Petrie
Art director
Christopher Wyatt
Music
Liz Gallacher
Makeup
Marese Langan
Sound
Rashad Omar
Sound editor
Joakim Sundström

Current

Fish Tank: An England Story
Fish Tank: An England Story

Andrea Arnold shows a tremendous empathy toward her downtrodden characters in this portrait of a teenage girl on the cusp of womanhood.

By Ian Christie

Molly Manning Walker’s Top 10
Molly Manning Walker’s Top 10

The award-winning writer and director of How to Have Sex shares her love for Carol Reed, discusses her favorite Adam Sandler performance, and names her ultimate feel-good movie.

Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s Top 10
Daisy von Scherler Mayer’s Top 10

The director of Party Girl celebrates two favorite dance films; a classic noir by her favorite director, Billy Wilder; and a pair of comedies written by Edwin Justus Mayer, her grandfather.

Josephine Decker’s Top 10
Josephine Decker’s Top 10

The director of Madeline’s Madeline and Shirley chooses a selection of old favorites that combine beauty with ugliness, the logical with the irrational.

Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Top 10
Rashaad Ernesto Green’s Top 10

The Independent Spirit Award–winning director of Premature selects ten masterpieces that introduced him to the beauty of cinema.

Bobby Womack Turns Up the Heat and the Soul in Fish Tank

Songbook

Bobby Womack Turns Up the Heat and the Soul in Fish Tank

Heard three times in Andrea Arnold’s coming-of-age drama, the R&B legend’s cover of “California Dreamin’ ” highlights the teenage heroine’s yearning for connection and escape.

By Rebecca Bengal

Kasi Lemmons’s Top 10
Kasi Lemmons’s Top 10

The award-winning director of Eve’s Bayou and Harriet talks about finding inspiration in psychologically rich character studies and films that break with reality.