Flow (Latvian: Straume) is a 2024 animated independent fantasy adventure film directed by Gints Zilbalodis and written by Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža. The film is notable for being completely rendered on the free and open-source software Blender and containing no dialogue. The film had its world premiere at the Un Certain Regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim. It won numerous film and animation awards, including the Best Animated Film awards at the 37th European Film Awards, the New York Film Critics Circle Awards, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, the National Board of Review Awards, and the 82nd Golden Globe Awards. At the 97th Academy Awards, it received nominations for Best International Feature Film (the third animated film to do so) and Best Animated Feature, becoming the first Latvian film to be considered for multiple awards and nominations from major ceremonies.

Plot

A dark grey cat wanders through a forest when a pack of dogs arrive by the river to catch fish. When two of the dogs fight over a fish, the cat takes the fish and is immediately chased by the dogs. The cat loses the dogs, but notices a herd of deer stampede before it is caught by an onrushing flood. The cat and the dogs survive the flood and reach higher ground. A yellow Labrador Retriever follows the cat to an abandoned cabin decorated with wooden cat sculptures before they both notice the water level rising rapidly and the Labrador joins the other dogs on a boat. With the cabin threatening to be consumed by the flood, the cat climbs atop a giant cat statue until the waters reach the top of the statue's head. As the rising water completely submerges the statue, the cat jumps into an approaching sailboat with a capybara aboard. The next morning, as the boat sails through a partially submerged forest, the cat goes overboard while trying to avoid a white secretarybird, but it begins to sink underwater. A whale saves it from drowning, but the secretarybird grabs the cat before it frees itself and lands back on the boat. As the water level continues to rise, the capybara invites a ring-tailed lemur to hop aboard with its basket of trinkets. Later that day, the three animals land on shore and are joined by the Labrador. They encounter a flock of secretarybirds that show hostility toward them, causing the cat to run away before the flock corners it. The secretarybird that first encountered the cat pleads with the leader to spare its life, only to lose in a duel and have its wing injured before the flock abandons it. Having lost some of its ability to fly, the secretarybird joins the crew. The crew arrives at a half-submerged city, set near the base of massive stone pillars. After learning from the capybara, the cat improves its ability to swim to catch fish on its own and feed the rest of the crew. Later, the crew sees the other dogs stranded in a bell tower. The secretarybird initially refuses to head for the dogs, but upon the cat giving its approval, the secretarybird begrudgingly lets the capybara take control of the boat and rescue the dogs. As the boat sails through the stone pillars during a heavy storm, the secretarybird leaves, having regained its ability to fly. The cat once again falls overboard, but it swims ashore and climbs to the top of one of the pillars, where it meets up with the secretarybird. They are both suddenly lifted up in the air by a bright light above them, but the cat is released back on the ground while the secretarybird flies toward the light, and disappears. The cat tries to swim back to the boat, but it is too far. However, it finds a glass float and uses it to stay afloat. Suddenly, the water level rapidly drops as suddenly as it had earlier risen. After much time roaming through the forest, the cat is reunited with the lemur and is led to the boat hanging on a tree. The dogs jump off the boat, but just as the capybara is about to exit, the tree begins to give in to the weight of the boat. The cat passes the boat's rope to the lemur and dogs, who work together to pull the boat toward them, but the dogs abandon the Labrador and its friends when a rabbit passes by them. The capybara and the cat manage to jump off before the boat and the tree fall off the cliff. Just as the crew celebrates, another deer stampede appears. The cat follows the stampede before seeing the whale beached in the forest. The cat comforts the whale before the capybara, Labrador, and lemur reunite with the cat and they look at their reflection in a puddle of water. In a post-credits sequence, the whale is seen surfacing on the ocean.

Production

In 2012, Zilbalodis produced Aqua, a short film about a cat overcoming its fear of the ocean. The premise of Aqua served as the basis for Flow. Zilbalodis used Maya to animate his previous works up to his 2019 film Away. That year, he switched to Blender because of the real-time renderer EEVEE. It took Zilbalodis and his production team five-and-a-half years to complete Flow. The film features no dialogue and Zilbalodis stated that he was inspired by Jacques Tati. There are no deleted scenes from the film. In 2022, while Flow was still in development, materials from the film were presented at that year's Cartoon Movie forum in Bordeaux. The film was produced with financial support from the National Film Centre of Latvia, the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée, ARTE France, Eurimages, RTBF, and the Belgian Tax Shelter. Animation for the film was completed in France and Belgium. It was animated using Blender. Seven hours of music was composed by Zilbalodis and 50 minutes of it was used in the film. Sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas used actual animal sounds for each character depicted in the film; the capybara was the only character to not use sounds from its real-world counterpart. As actual capybara sounds were too high-pitched and unpleasant, Coïc-Gallas used the sounds of a baby camel instead.

Music

The film's soundtrack was composed by Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe, and was released on streaming media platforms by Milan Records on 1 November 2024.

Marketing

A board game based on the film was released in January 2025.

Release

Flow was selected to premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on 22 May 2024. The film screened at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival, where it was awarded the Jury Award, the Audience Award, and the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution in the Feature Film category. Flow was submitted to the 2024 Ottawa International Animation Festival, where it received the Grand Prize for Feature Animation. The film was also screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival. The film was invited to 'Open Cinema' at the 29th Busan International Film Festival and was screened at the outdoor theater in October 2024. Flow premiered at the Splendid Palace cinema in Riga, Latvia, on 28 August 2024 and was released nationwide the following day by Baltic Content Media. UFO Distribution released the film theatrically in France on 30 October 2024. It was given a limited release in the United States by Janus Films and Sideshow in New York and Los Angeles on 22 November 2024, before being released to 200 theatres on 6 December. The film was released in Belgium on 15 January 2025 by Le Parc Distribution. Madman Entertainment is set to release the film theatrically in Australia on 20 March 2025. Since its release in Latvia, Flow has sold over 100,000 tickets, becoming one of the most popular domestic films of the country. By January 2025, the film had sold over 240,000 tickets thanks to the Golden Globe win, as well as its other accolades. Flow also became Janus Films' highest-grossing film in the U.S. with US$3.9 million in ticket sales, surpassing the domestic haul of Drive My Car (2021).

Reception

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 97% of 123 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's consensus reads: "Thanks to its innovative animation and mature themes, going with this Flow proves irresistible." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 23 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Writing for The New York Times, Calum Marsh noted that "the animals act like real animals, not like cartoons or humans, and that restraint gives their adventure an authenticity that, in moments of both delight and peril, makes the emotion that much more powerful." Jake Coyle of the Associated Press called Flow the best animated film of 2024, writing that the "computer generated animation adds to its dreamy, curiously real surrealism." Christian Blauvelt, writing for IndieWire, gave Flow an A rating and praised it as "brimming with sentiment but not sentimentality" and compared its limited dialogue and non-anthropomorphized animals to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron.

= Accolades

= Flow won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Animated Film, National Board of Review Award for Best Animated Film and New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Animated Film, making the first animated film to win all three awards since The Incredibles in 2004.

See also

List of submissions to the 97th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film List of Latvian submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film Minimalist film

References

External links

Official website (Latvia) Official website (United States) Flow at IMDb Official Screenplay Archived January 5, 2025, at the Wayback Machine

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