Finding Nemo

Finding Nemo is a 2003 computer-animated adventure film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. Directed by Andrew Stanton, with co-direction by Lee Unkrich, it takes place largely in the waters surrounding Australia and follows Marlin, an anxious clownfish voiced by Albert Brooks. After a barracuda attack kills Marlin’s mate Coral and nearly all of their eggs, he becomes intensely protective of his only surviving son, Nemo.

Nemo, voiced by Alexander Gould, has a smaller-than-normal right fin, which Marlin calls his “lucky fin.” Frustrated by his father’s caution, Nemo swims away from a school excursion near the Great Barrier Reef and is captured by a diver. The diver is dentist Philip Sherman, who takes Nemo to an aquarium in his Sydney office. Sherman intends to give Nemo to his niece Darla, a child known for mishandling fish; the aquarium residents fear that Nemo will not survive her visit.

Marlin sets out across the ocean to find him, accompanied by Dory, a regal blue tang voiced by Ellen DeGeneres. Dory suffers from severe short-term memory loss but remembers the address written on the diver’s mask: “P. Sherman, 42 Wallaby Way, Sydney.” Their journey includes encounters with three sharks—Bruce, Anchor, and Chum—who are attempting to avoid eating fish, a dangerous school of jellyfish, and a group of sea turtles traveling on the East Australian Current.

Meanwhile, Nemo befriends the aquarium fish known as the Tank Gang, led by Gill, a Moorish idol voiced by Willem Dafoe. Gill devises an escape plan involving clogging the aquarium filter so the fish will be placed in plastic bags during cleaning. Nemo eventually succeeds in jamming the filter with a pebble, but the group’s circumstances change when they learn that Marlin may have died.

The film’s climax brings Marlin, Dory, and Nemo together in Sydney Harbour after Nemo escapes down a drain and reaches the ocean. Nemo helps rescue Dory and a school of fish caught in a fishing net by instructing them to swim downward together, an idea Gill had previously taught him. Finding Nemo won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, becoming Pixar’s first film to receive that honor. It was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing. The film later received a sequel, Finding Dory, released in 2016, centered on Dory’s search for her family.