Fish Tank

2009 Directed by Andrea Arnold

Live, love and give as good as you get.

Everything changes for 15-year-old Mia when her mum brings home a new boyfriend.

Katie Jarvis Michael Fassbender Kierston Wareing Rebecca Griffiths Harry Treadaway Jason Maza Jack Gordon Joanna Horton Sarah Bayes Grant Wild Sydney Mary Nash Carrie-Ann Savill Toyin Ogidi Charlotte Collins Kirsty Smith Chelsea Chase Brooke Hobby Nick Staverson Anthony Geary Geoff McCracken Val King Peter Roue Charlie Baker Kishana Thomas Raquel Thomas Natasha Ilic Maxine Brogan Kirsty Page Georgia Crane

Alternative Titles

El rebelde mundo de Mía, Akvaarium, Akvaario, Akvarij, Akvarijum

drama

123 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by brat pitt ★★★★

michael fassbender in fish tank (2009): mia, wait up! *bends over* jump on my back!
me, a woman named mia: hell yeah fuckin right this is cinema!
Review by Eli Hayes ★★★★★ 19

Possibly the most unorthodox choice of the films in my all-time top ten, but to me, this film perfectly captures the feelings that one experiences as a teenager, from "I just want to get out of this town," to "all I really want to do is insert passion." For Mia, it's dance, and for me, it was film... so in a sense, Fish Tank is almost like a meta-film in my eyes, because it's a movie about adolescent passions, and mine was (and still is) cinema. As soon as I reached the point in the film during which Nas' Life's a Bitch cropped up - one of my favorite songs by my single favorite rapper - I knew that I…
Review by DirkH ★★★★½ 4

Set out to make you miserable from the starting block, Fish Tank managed to make me feel elated, depressed, angry and above all impressed. It's just that good.
Bleak and distressing films, when done right, often provoke in me a sense of unease, a sense of awareness of bad things always lurking around the corner. I'm a fairly positive person, but am always weary when things are going well. I'm always on the look out, perhaps even waiting for things to go wrong. I'm fully aware that this is an unmistakable self fulfilling prophecy, but it's just something I carry with me and can't switch off.
To say that I connected to Mia, Fish Tank's amazing protagonist, is an understatement.…
Review by Jyn ★★★★

when she broke into michael fassbender's house and peed on the floor? try to think of a more iconic moment i'll wait
Review by kayla ★★★★ 5

Of course this mom was a little nicer and happier after dating Michael Fassbender.... we’ve all seen Shame girl I’d clean my house too
Review by lauren ★★★★½

yeah andrea arnold supports men's rights...........men's rights to shut the fuck up!
Review by Jim Cummings ★★★★★ 6

The last shot makes me clap and cry and laugh every time.
We love you Andrea.
Review by ethan ★★★★★ 1

This review may contain spoilers. I can handle the truth.

when she broke into michael fassbenders house and pissed on his floor? an iconic piece of cinema
Review by Nick ★★★★★ 4

What's worse than a hopeless life is a life with false hope, and Fish Tank is the vivid, soul shattering proof of that.
In Fish Tank, Mia, a teenage girl from a poor, dysfunctional British family, comes of age with grace and pride, despite the hardballs life keeps throwing at her. It's a microscopic, ultra realistic insight into the lives of the underrepresented, with every spotlight shone on the vessel of Mia, who struggles dealing with a neglecting mother, a misplaced crush that ends horribly, and her passion for hip hop dance and music as an escape. It's a hugely empathetic, heartfelt experience, thanks to a refreshingly raw debut performance from Katie Jarvis. Emotion flows under an unassuming plot that…
Review by Siegel™ ★★★★ 16

Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank is grim, but the plot is always propelled by a hope and optimism. Granted, the optimism is heavily balanced with realism, but that's where the film truly shines. The film is a sharp social-realist look into the domestic life of a fifteen year old girl, Mia, exploring the young girl's realities with a stirring impression of empathy. Obsessed with hip-hop and dance culture, she is determined to pursue her passion, supremely optimistic about her chances despite being troubled by a rocky relationship with her mother, an instantly concerning sexual attraction between herself and her mom's boyfriend Conor, and her overall lack of social graces. Arnold has a fantastic eye for finding a rather profound underlying beauty…
Review by Sally Jane Black 2

Flashes of Frankenstein join the girls at the water, tension mounting (more tense and horrific than that old horror cheeze) as you face the unpredictability of someone at the end of it, suffering frustration, confusion, jealousy, loss, disappointment. Disappointment is the defining characteristic here, pervading every character, every situation, every building or yard, as teenage dreams meet the realities of strip clubs, old and sickly horses, or men who are not the messiah. Moments wrapped in thick, heavy light mask and heighten emotions, filling the frame with a sense of heat or age. Music and movement are keys to escape (but only rare provide surcease of angst--as an outlet, it's also attuned to disappointment). In the end, it draws them…
Review by 🌻 lindsay 🌻 ★★★★½ 7

This movie made me feel miserable and anxious and full of dread…. I loved it.
I loved it because it was made with such care and empathy. Because Andrea Arnold wasn’t setting out to make the viewer miserable just for the sake of it. She captured a real experience and story that deserves to be told and to be told well.
Teenage girls get so much shit from a society that is constantly trying to commodify and abuse their bodies as early as possible. Mia’s story is heartbreaking and real and I really felt for her so much. Being taken advantage of at a young age, being limited in resources, being trapped in a toxic environment, trying to pursue her dreams without any support.
This was great. It was hard to watch, especially if you relate at all to Mia’s situation but I think this is a very important film.

Recent reviews

Review by Oliver ★★★★½

Andrea Arnold and Robbie Ryan have such a wonderful partnership and this striking ability to forge these gorgeous, humanistic perspectives. This film always left a long lasting impression on me, and revisiting it after a few years only compounds all those things that I greatly admire about it
Review by Jacky ★★★★

I love this movie so much
Review by 🌻 amparo 🌻 ampi pittana ★★★★

yo durante la primera mitad: aaa es sobre una linda relación novio de mamá/hija 😊
yo durante la segunda mitad: I fucking hate it here
Review by rae ★★★½

that dance in the park to me n u by Cassie was iconic and I couldn’t relate more
Review by Luc Mandl ★★★★

This is more of a review of Letterboxd:
Letterboxd has sort of trained me to ask myself what I think about a movie before asking myself how I feel about a movie. I’d like to start trying to switch that order around.
Review by Nathan Combs ★★★★½

The final dance scene is masterful. Akin to The Florida Project with the visceral nature that it captures poverty, pain, and the youth stuck in it. Yet unlike Florida Project which captures innocence blinding harsh realities, Fish Tank captures death of innocence. Our lead still has hopes and dreams, but it all slowly washes away as harsh realities start to roll in. Fish Tank is an amazing portrait of impoverished teenage life.
Review by Eric ★★★★

I dreaded a large chunk of the middle of the film—mostly due to a collision that seemed inevitable but I was hoping I had misread. The last act picked up with some unexpected choices and one really sweet scene between Mia, Tyler and their mom.
Review by Nico Cárcamo ★★★★

- I hate you!
- I hate you, too.
Review by heythisisjames ★★★★★

One of the best films that I have seen that has tried to modernize the coming-of-age film for outsiders who don’t have much back at home. This is really uncomfortable and upsetting in a lot of ways, but I also felt personally very profound and magnetizing as we grew with Mia and saw her in some ways, become more mature than her mother. There is so much disappointment in her life, even if you had a much better upbringing, it is easy to understand her disappointment and how she is forced to grow up. Michael Fassbender was great, not surprisingly, but Katie Jarvis absolutely helps elevate this film in a very realistic way.
Review by sivad ★★★★½

Criterion channel
Review by Doudi ★★★★

If a shirtless Michael Fassbender walked into my kitchen one morning and made me some tea, I would fall in love with him too.
Review by JonathanFarrar ★★★★½

Gonna go down as a absolute classic, in British film making. Katie Jarvis completely knocks it out of the park here! Such a fantastic yet difficult watch a times!