Crazy Fish Sing defies traditional genre boundaries, embodying the abstract intangibility of the book title itself. Inspired by Suranga Katugampala’s forthcoming film, Still Here, Simone Brioni, Peter Bruno, and Loredana Polezzi took us through the chaotic process of crafting a book simultaneously with the final stages of the film’s production, showing us their perspective on “cultural hybridity, urbanization, and realism.”

We often think about migration from a sociological perspective and not from the beauty it brings, which is why the aesthetic component of both the book and documentary is incredibly crucial. Expanding cinematic production, Still Here emphasizes the mood of the film rather than the plot, just as Crazy Fish Sing captures its subject unconventionally by containing interviews, diaries, essays, art, and more. 

You can’t predict the outcome of life, so the film does not make room for prediction itself. The unique film style brings the viewer through typical walks of life by including pauses of silence, frames of stillness, and moments that defy straightforward explanations. By having the frames stand still, the film presents time as both paused and continuous, highlighting that to understand movement, you must also understand stillness. The book also embodies unpredictability by containing various mediums; you truly cannot predict what the next page will bring. 

Crazy Fish Sing and Still Here beautifully capture the inconsistency of life. They push beyond their constraints to transport the audience to the spaces they highlight- artificial, colonized, affective, and more. Both the book and the film skillfully open a dialogue that challenges us to see migration and space not just as a sociological phenomenon but as aesthetic works of art.