India’s Toonz Media Group and Tokyo-based studio Supersub LLC have joined forces to co-produce “The Taste of Water,” an animated feature documentary tracing the history, culture, and future of Japanese sake.
The deal was unveiled at the Annecy Animation Film Festival.
Directed by Riki Ohkanda and executive produced by Ryo Nakajima, the film is currently in production. It follows a road-movie structure divided into five chapters – covering sake’s fundamentals, its history, its relationship with Japanese culture, the pressures the industry now faces, and its potential futures. Through encounters with brewers, historians, artists, distributors, and cultural experts across Japan, the documentary builds its inquiry around a single question: what does it mean for a great sake to taste like water?
The film’s production pipeline is central to its identity. Live-action footage gathered throughout Japan will be converted into anime-influenced visuals using AI-assisted rotoscoping and 3D Gaussian Splatting, a volumetric rendering technique, both developed in-house by Supersub. The hybrid workflow is designed to convey sensory and emotional dimensions of sake culture that conventional documentary formats cannot easily reach.
“The story of sake is a story that engages all five senses,” Nakajima said. “Through this unique combination of live action, animation, and AI-assisted visual transformation, we can bring audiences closer to experiences that cannot be expressed through traditional filmmaking alone.”
The collaboration marks the latest chapter in Supersub’s relationship with Annecy. The studio first appeared at the festival when its previous feature, “Who Said Death Is Beautiful?,” received an official selection in 2024. “The Taste of Water” was subsequently presented at MIFA 2025 as part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s exhibition programme at the event.
Toonz, which produces more than 5,000 minutes of animation annually and has co-produced features including “Bartali’s Bicycle” and “Zombie Town,” brings international sales and distribution infrastructure to the project. The partnership positions “The Taste of Water” at the intersection of Japan’s animation pedigree and India’s growing role in global content production.
“Artificial intelligence is one of the most discussed technologies in the creative industry today, yet there are few examples of its thoughtful application in storytelling,” said Viswanath Rao of Toonz Media Group. “With ‘The Taste of Water,’ we are demonstrating how AI can work alongside artists and filmmakers to create new forms of expression.”
“Animated feature documentary is one of the most exciting and underserved spaces in the international market right now,” added Gulshan David, VP of feature films at Toonz. “We’re here at Annecy to find the right partners to take it there together.”
The film is targeting festival circuits in 2027.
