Director/Photography/Art Direction – Gints Zilbalodis, Screenplay – Ron Dyens, Matiss Kaza, Gregory Zalcman & Gints Zilbalodis, Script Adaptation – Ron Dyens, Producers – Matiss Kaza & Gints Zilbalodis, Music – Rihards Zalupe & Gints Zilbalodis, Director of Animation – Leo Silly-Pelissier, Animation Studios – Carbone 14 & Le Studio. Production Company – Canal+/Cine+/Arte/Eurimages/RTBF.be/Region Sud Provence Alpes Cote de Azur/CNC/Sofica Cinemage/Indiefilms/La Banque Postale/National Film Centre of Latvia/Sacrebleu Productions/Take Five/Dream Well Studio.
Plot
A cat is disturbed from the abandoned home it inhabits as a flood sweeps the area, engulfing everything. The cat tentatively joins forces with a golden labrador as they climb aboard an abandoned sailboat. Also joining them as they continue through the flooded area is a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur and a secretary bird. In their journey, they are able to overcome their differences to achieve mutual cooperation.
Flow was the second feature film made by Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis. After a handful of short films, Zilbalodis made the feature-length Away (2021), which received reasonable international acclaim. Both Away and Flow are made without dialogue and using open-source software. Flow was made with mostly French financing and the animation conducted by French studios. The film premiered in the Un Certain Regard of the 2024 Cannes festival.
In a peculiar trivia note, Flow is also the third film of 2024 to have been made with no dialogue, following Azrael (2024) and Year 10 (2024), while there was also the wide release of Robot Dreams (2023) featuring an anthropomorphic dog that does not speak. The only speech that we get throughout is natural animal sounds, which have been recorded from the actual corresponding animals in most cases. It makes for an unusual film where we get the anthropomorphic animals of animation standard. However, for once, they have been rigorously depicted as realistic animals rather than the Talking Animal variety we usually get where they become much more humanised.
There are quite a number of similarities between Flow and the live-action The Adventures of Milo and Otis (1986), along with other live-action films in a similar vein such as The Incredible Journey (1963), Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey (1993) and Napoleon (1995), which depict animals on a journey. As such, you can debate whether Flow actually is a fantasy film or just a mundane one. These other live-action films are technically fantasy in that they are often narrated by the animal characters, but I don’t bother to write about them because they otherwise have animals behaving in natural, realistic ways. Similarly, in Flow the animals are depicted in a realistic, non-anthropomorphic vein, which places the film on the side of mundane. However, they gradually do adopt human behaviours throughout the course of the film – learning to sail the boat, conducting rescues of one another and, in particular, one scene where the animals band together to insist that the secretary bird divert from its course to rescue several stranded dogs.
(l to r) The cat, the dog, the secretary bird, the capybara and the ring-tailed lemurThe cat in the prow as the boat sails through the ancient city
The film also exists in a strange world that appears to have been abandoned by humans – abandoned buildings and the detritus of civilisation is all around. Some of this verges on the fantastical – an entirely half-drowned ancient city with a whale swimming through the canals as the yacht drifts past, giant-sized statues of cats and people – while the catastrophe is a flood that seems to cover far more territory and in far greater height and rapidity than world be normal for flood-like conditions. You could also stretch a point in that the film shows animals living in the wild that don’t normally inhabit the postal codes – the ring-tailed lemur is native to Madagascar, the secretary bird is native to Africa and the capybara native to South America. All of this gave me a considerable think as to whether to include Flow as a fantasy film or not and under which categories to label it.
The animation was all produced by open-source software. This brings me to the biggest issue I have with Flow. It may well be simple that I have been spoiled by the various Pixar, DreamWorks, Blue Sky animated films and in contrast this is simply a case of being something more low-tech in comparison. The animation of the various animal characters resembles more of a test reel than a completed product. It becomes distracting for some way into the film.
However, once you accustom to the style of Flow, it is a beautiful film. While I have fairly much given up on mainstream Animation over the last decade because of its concentration on endlessly recycled IP rather than quality product, this is one of the most unpretentious and charmingly heartwarming animated films I’ve seen in time. The quirky naturalism of the animals and the way they are allowed to develop into characters without losing what is natural to them is sublime. The considerable charms of the film come in watching these non-verbal characters come together and cooperate, creating a ragtag community of sorts, and the various adversities they encounter and overcome along their way. The characters may not speak but it’s the best film about finding family and community spirit you will see all year.
Flow won the 2025 Academy Awards for Best Animated film.
