Over the 95-year historical past of the Academy Awards, a Latvian movie has by no means been nominated for an Oscar. In 2025, it’s doable that Gints Zilbalodis’ celebrated surprise “Flow” will earn not solely an animated function nomination however a spot within the worldwide movie class as properly. For a movie that on its floor is about an unnamed cat who experiences a monstrous flood alongside a very energetic canine, a pleasant South American capybara, a lemur and a statuesque African secretary hen with a broken wing, these could appear intellectual expectations.
However there’s extra to the story, says Zilbalodis, who burst onto the worldwide animation scene after shepherding the 2019 function “Away” on his personal. The filmmaker was impressed to create “Flow,” partially, by a cat he had in highschool. On the time, the story manifested itself in a “very simple hand-drawn” brief movie a couple of cat and its concern of water — a common narrative that allowed the story to proceed and not using a conventional antagonist.
“It’s really just the cat versus nature, or it’s really a cat versus itself. It has to kind of overcome its fears,” Zilbalodis says. “Many years later I decided to revisit this premise. But this time the focus is more on the cat’s relationship with the other animals. The water is just there, a metaphor basically for this fear, because the cat is very independent, and it has to learn how to work together with others and how to trust them.”
With the co-production between Latvia, France and Belgium, Zilbalodis went from being a jack-of-all-trades to forming his personal manufacturing firm — thereby mirroring the loner cat’s sudden have to work in a workforce surroundings. “I was quite anxious about doing that. And some of these anxieties are built into this story,” he says. He jumped headlong right into a venture 50 occasions larger than his final function but in addition, notably, 50 occasions smaller than a Disney animated movie.
Animals should work collectively to outlive in “Flow.”
(Pageant de Cannes)
A bigger group of collaborators doesn’t imply Zilbalodis’ affect isn’t felt all through the movie, nevertheless. In addition to directing, producing and designing a lot of the essential characters, he co-wrote the screenplay and is the cinematographer, editor and composer, amongst different roles.
“It’s a bit embarrassing that you see my name a few times in the credits, but we needed to list those different titles for contractual purposes,” Zilbalodis sheepishly says. “What I wasn’t really involved with is the actual animation, the movement of the characters, the performance, which I allowed other people much better than me to do. I had every shot designed, edited and lit. But if an animator would suggest something, it was important that we try to incorporate those ideas.”
Nonetheless, “Flow” confronted a number of urgent challenges. The primary was an age-old animation drawback: creating lifelike water. Zilbalodis laments that just about “every scene required a new tool to be developed. It’s not like we have one tool for all kinds of water. We have a tool for a puddle, we have a tool for a lake, a stormy sea, a small splash, a big splash. So, we had to develop a lot of new technology and tools.”
The film additionally showcases a number of spectacular lengthy takes because the cameras observe the characters. “Some of these shots got so heavy, with so many characters and different environments, that managing it was really difficult. All the pipelines that the animators are used to are not meant for these types of shots. Any adjustments would make the computer freeze for a moment before it readjusted something.”
The movie opens with our feline encountering a pack of overzealous canines within the blooming forest earlier than napping in a seemingly deserted Northern European-inspired house. There isn’t a human in sight, nevertheless it seems the onetime proprietor of the house was a sculptor who was impressed by felines.
“I wanted it to feel quite timeless. It could be like this house is a hundred years old. It could be a newer one,” Zilbalodis says. “That was deliberate. So, the environment is constantly evolving and changing, and it’s not just for the sense of looking pretty. It’s there to kind of help us understand these characters.”
After a flood engulfs the cat’s house, it finds itself in a small sailboat together with the opposite three animals. Because the movie progresses, they journey by means of architectural ruins which might be usually troublesome to put. And, identical to the cat, Zilbalodis desires us to really feel as if we’re experiencing these places for the primary time. And since it’s from the cat’s perspective, all the things appears even larger than it could be from a human viewpoint.
When you’re hoping for a protracted expository scene explaining what occurred earlier than the flood, you’ll be disenchanted. Zilbalodis would discover it “quite boring” to go down that highway. He believes viewers ought to be energetic individuals and never simply have all the things spoon-fed to them. “I think if the audience has to work for something, they have to pay attention, then they care more about everything, not just the world but the story itself as well. They become more invested.”