Tickets Are Only Available via BFI London Film Festival Website from Tuesday 16 September 2025 10:00am: Click Here To Book

Yasuhiro Aoki’s anarchic anime fairytale, the new film from Japan’s STUDIO4°C, depicts a wayward mermaid with love on her mind.

In a future Shanghai, where humans and merpeople co-exist, mermaid princess ChaO proposes to Stephan, a human ship worker who finds himself caught up in a whirlwind of romance, misunderstanding and chaos. With some beautifully drawn and weirdly psychedelic character design, and an enjoyably surreal story that teases out important underlying themes, ChaO is a true original.

Japanese Language with English Subtitles