‘We’re going to become fish’: how a ‘natural history fantasy’ found its way to the Baftas

The award-winning short film's creators hope that casting a woman as a female salmon will help viewers connect with the fish, which was recently classed as near threatened'

A strange-looking woman in a wetsuit heaves herself up on to a gravel beach in a remote corner of Iceland. Her mouth is swollen and peculiarly wide, she has webbed hands and is wearing a huge black diving mask and flippers. She stops moving abruptly and lies still, not breathing, her arms and legs splayed out at odd angles on the pebbles.

But as the camera zooms slowly in on her body and the actor Marianne Faithfull's voice starts narrating, we learn that the webbed woman is not a woman after all. She is a fish.