With Flow, Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis delivers a quietly ambitious animated feature — a wordless, visually distinctive fable that recently took home the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, beating out heavyweights like Disney•Pixar’s Inside Out 2 and DreamWorks’ The Wild Robot. A Latvian-French-Belgian co-production, the film follows a black cat navigating a seemingly post-apocalyptic world as rising waters swallow the remnants of civilisation. It’s a film of restraint and resonance, favouring atmosphere and tone over conventional storytelling.
Made using the open-source software Blender and produced over five-and-a-half years, Flow is clearly a passion project — one that trusts its audience to follow a story told entirely without dialogue. Zilbalodis lets the world unfold gently, following a drifting group of animals — including a capybara, a lemur, and a golden retriever — as they navigate this sunken landscape alongside their feline companion.
The animation blends realism with a more abstract, hand-drawn quality. Some sequences are strikingly beautiful, enhanced by flowing camerawork and long, immersive takes. At times, though, the film’s modest scale peeks through. Certain textures and movements recall early video game cutscenes, and while this doesn’t undercut the experience, it may occasionally remind viewers of the film’s limitations.
Still, Flow’s greatest strength is its tone. There’s a meditative calm to the storytelling that gradually draws you in. The animals don’t speak, and they mostly behave largely like animals — no cartoonish expressions or slapstick — but their relationships evolve in quiet, meaningful ways. Through body language and animation alone, we feel connection, tension, humour, heartbreak.
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The film also offers more to unpack than its minimalist surface might suggest. Themes of survival, trust, community, and renewal sit at its core — and for those looking deeper, there are clear undercurrents of allegory, mythical and biblical connections, and environmental reflection. It’s a film that rewards thought without demanding interpretation, open to children and adults alike — though younger viewers may find its muted tone and contemplative pace less engaging than flashier fare.
At just 85 minutes, the film never outstays its welcome. And for those who stay through the credits, there’s one final moment that adds an important punctuation mark to the journey.
Ultimately, Flow is a rare and thoughtful animated feature — one that opts for quiet emotion over spectacle. Its style might be too subdued for some, but it’s a gentle, sincere, and refreshingly original experience. A small film, perhaps, but one with a long-lasting ripple.
