Fighting Fish

Like so many harbour cities, Rotterdam has a large Chinese community. At a Rotterdam Festival with a long tradition in the field of Chinese cinema, a real Rotterdam martial arts film is certainly not out of place. Many scenes have been shot at well-known Rotterdam locations, such as the West-Kruiskade and in restaurant Tai Wu. Fighting Fish, the first Dutch martial arts film, is about a young Chinese man from Hong Kong, called A-Ken (Kim Ho Kim), who travels to the West as he finds out that his brother has died in a battle between two rival gangs in Rotterdam. On arrival here, he soon makes use of his raging fists. Then he finds out that everything is not the way it seems and sets out to discover what really happened when his brother died. His investigation takes an unexpected turn when he falls in love with a Dutch girl (Chantal Janzen). Her protective brother (played by martial arts expert Ron Smoorenburg, who started his film career in Jackie Chan’s Who Am I?) is not happy about this relationship. Aattache took his inspiration from films by Sergio Leone and Bruce Lee. That combination led to a real ‘Eastern’, a story about honour, treachery, impossible love and of course revenge.