{"id":1621,"date":"2026-05-14T17:35:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:35:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/2026\/05\/14\/will-mermaid-school-movie-titanic-ocean-become-a-cannes-breakout\/"},"modified":"2026-05-14T17:35:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-14T17:35:00","slug":"will-mermaid-school-movie-titanic-ocean-become-a-cannes-breakout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/2026\/05\/14\/will-mermaid-school-movie-titanic-ocean-become-a-cannes-breakout\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Mermaid School Movie \u2018Titanic Ocean\u2019 Become a Cannes Breakout?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\tThe first footage from Konstantina Kotzamani\u2019s debut feature has just arrived, and it\u2019s unlike anything else in this year\u2019s selection.<\/p>\n

\tThe Greek filmmaker has conjured something genuinely strange and irresistible: a dayglo fantasia about girls who train to become professional mermaids, and the one among them who learns that the costume is only the beginning. \t<\/p>\n

\tSet in a Japanese boarding school where teenage girls learn to hold their breath, perform for adoring crowds, and swim alongside sharks, the film follows 17-year-old Akame as she finds her voice, discovers first love, and ultimately undergoes a metamorphosis. <\/p>\n

\tIt taps into something primal \u2014 the same childhood longing that made Daryl Hannah\u2019s mermaid in\u00a0Splash<\/em>\u00a0an icon, and that has fueled a real-world mermaid performance subculture ever since. (This writer explored that obsession in a recent episode of\u00a0It Happened in Hollywood<\/em><\/a>, with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer reflecting on how they brought Splash<\/em>\u00a0to life.)<\/p>\n

\tAs teased in the clip, Kotzamani\u2019s world is filled with saturated colors and hypnotic ideas. It\u2019s equal parts aquatic spectacle and coming-of-age pressure cooker. It\u2019s the kind of film that invents its own genre \u2014 part fantasy, part body horror, part J-pop fantasia.<\/p>\n

\tA multinational co-production spanning Greece, Germany, Romania, France, Spain, and Japan, the film boasts a cast of Japanese actresses led by Arisa Sasaki, with music by Patricia Ferragud and cinematography by Rapha\u00ebl Vandenbussche. International sales are handled by Paradise City Sales.<\/p>\n

\tUn Certain Regard has an excellent track record for this kind of thing \u2014 formally adventurous films that leave audiences slightly altered. It\u2019s the section that gave us Lukas Dhont\u2019s\u00a0Girl<\/em> and Maryam Touzani\u2019s\u00a0The Blue Caftan<\/em>\u00a0before the world caught up with them.\u00a0Titanic Ocean<\/a><\/em>\u00a0has all the hallmarks of a cult object in the making. Do hold your breath.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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The first footage from Konstantina Kotzamani\u2019s debut feature has just arrived, and it\u2019s unlike anything else in this year\u2019s selection. The Greek filmmaker has conjured something genuinely strange and irresistible: a dayglo fantasia about girls who train to become professional mermaids, and the one among them who learns that the costume is only the beginning. Set in a Japanese boarding school where teenage girls learn to hold their breath, perform for adoring crowds, and swim alongside sharks, the film follows 17-year-old Akame as she finds her voice, discovers first love, and ultimately undergoes a metamorphosis. It taps into something primal \u2014 the same childhood longing that made Daryl Hannah\u2019s mermaid […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[423,307,2,164,60,1049],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cannes","category-cannes-2026","category-hollywood","category-movie-features","category-movies","category-titanic-ocean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsmag.live\/ja\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}