Flow ★★★★★

Released: 21^st March 2025

Director: Gints Zilbalodis

Starring: Cat, Capybara, Lemur, Labrador, Secretarybird

In late 2019, Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis burst onto the scene with his debut feature film, Away.  It was noteworthy for three main reasons.  The first, that Zilbalodis made the entire film by himself; every frame of its ambitious swooping camerawork, every watercolour-esque landscape and character design, every note of its haunting ambient score, all made by him alone over the course of a few years.  The second, in stark contrast to a theatrical medium which is arguably too talkative, that it featured no dialogue whatsoever over the course of its 75 minutes.  The third, and the reason why Away managed to break free from any “gimmick” shackles, that it was bloody brilliant.

An abstract yet deeply emotional journey whose vibes were impeccable, every lingering silence and sprawling mountainside vista and communal nature clan we come across filled with such overwhelming feeling.  To some degree, it’s a Rorschach test – which you can read as various metaphors for depression, environmentalism, PTSD, and searching for some kind of community – where Zilbalodis’ improvisational approach to storytelling (no scripts, no storyboards, everything created in-sequence) makes each interpretation contradictory.  But sitting in a cinema screen mid-Summer of 2020, I can tell you that Away utterly gutted me, released emotions pent up inside I didn’t know needed freeing, and each subsequent viewing over the years has only solidified its arthouse greatness.

When interviewed years later, Zilbalodis would affectionately refer to Away as his “unofficial graduation student film,” which makes sense.  For as much as Away is brilliant and moved me, the rough edges were always apparent; stiff character animation, limited movement cycles and environmental designs born equally out of convenience/ease as stylistic choice, and the retroactive sense that things were being made up as they went along.  Not to say that these were shine-ruining drawbacks, more to note how impressive that Away turned out as good as it did whilst bearing the marks of a first-time filmmaker working with restricted means.  Away was great, but whatever Zilbalodis made next had the potential to be sensational.

Flow realises that potential and then some.  Despite now working with a full multi-cultural team of animators – a co-production between three independent studios in Belgium (Take Five), France (Sacrebleu Productions), and Latvia (Zilablodis’ own Dream Well Studio) – and backed by a grant-aided budget, Zilbalodis’ nascent style has not been sacrificed one iota.  Rather, Flow builds upon the framework of Away to provide a far more thematically rich, visually breathtaking, and emotionally fulfilling work whose inspirational debts are clear yet realised into something wholly unique even within the current artistic boom period of our theatrical animation landscape.

From the very beginning of Flow, you can see Zilbalodis flexing his growth as both a storyteller and a technical animator.  Perhaps the standout sequence of Away, to the extent that stills from it became a cornerstone of the film’s marketing, involved the Boy riding his motorcycle across a lake whose clear blue water perfectly reflected the flock of white birds who flew overhead, making it look like they were all flying together as the camera swooped high and low in lengthy uninterrupted takes.  The elegance of the composition and spiritual meaning of the sequence were so strong that you either don’t notice or don’t care that both Boy and birds are quite slowly animated with vague expressions, that water ripples are simple repetitive convex circles, and that the camera which wants to evoke the dynamic character of Alfonso Cuarón or Hideo Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid V cutscene direction is on a rigid track.  The ambition doesn’t outstrip the means, but the trickery required to pull off the scene is apparent.

Flow’s opening shot features a dark grey Cat staring at its own highly-detailed reflection in a puddle of water, individual ripples shimmering and burbling like a real brook.  The Cat moves its head gingerly as it meows but with a tangible weight the Boy of Away only sometimes showed, its ear tilts slightly and then flickers when a twig nearby breaks snapping into alert caution with the speed and precision of a real cat, whilst the irises grow and shrink as the situation around it changes.  There’s even a little tongue blep, the kind of quick incidental animation that the well-cats of Away never showed.  Meanwhile, the camera bobs and tucks, more tangibly placing the viewer within the scene as it whips around to show a herd of dogs race by before returning back to the Cat emerging from its grassy hiding place.  Whilst the shot and animation choices of Away’s mirror lake absolutely worked, just the first 20 seconds of Flow demonstrate the leap made by Zilbalodis and his team.  And it’s a standard not only upheld throughout the remainder of Flow’s 84 minutes, but one achieved in Blender, an open-source computer graphics software that anyone can use.

The increased detail and visual fidelity don’t come at the expense of strong direction, either.  As Flow once again forgoes dialogue to tell its story – following the Cat as it tries to survive an inexplicable constantly-rising flood via an errant sailboat, picking up various other stranded animals (a breezy Capybara, a hoarding Lemur, an excitable Labrador, and a stern Secretarybird) along the way – the onus is on the film’s visual language to communicate scale, wonder, danger, and character.  Even within 2024’s crop of phenomenal animated films, the world of Flow is perhaps the most tactile, astonishing, and engrossing of all.

There’s an almost painterly, pointillist approach to the fur on the animals which arguably makes them look fluffier and more appealing than if photorealistic fur effects were used, helping them stand out amid luscious greenery-overgrown environments shaded with golden hour lighting.  The lighting throughout Flow is superb both on a technical level – the way it bounces off of rippling sea waves, or the depth of field effects when direct sun is blocked by the sail, are superb for a film with this small a budget (a mere €3.5 million) – and a storytelling level, such as how the Cat’s gradual rejection of shade on the boat indicates a growing willingness to work with the group rather than isolate itself.

Zilbalodis’ camera is constantly moving, to a degree which risks being a tad too much but ultimately services the on-screen story first and foremost.  There are Ghibli-esque flight and swimming sequences of true awe, Cuarón-esque sequences of stress-inducing panic as extensive takes drag the viewer along with the Cat on perilous currents away from safety, and tension-filled setpieces whose potential risk (be they worrisome height or suffocatingly tight buildings) are communicated just through where he chooses to situate the camera.  (Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe’s score is more symphonic than the former’s Eno-indebted work on Away, but restraint is still the name of the game to its overall benefit.)

And the character communicated by this animation is astounding, especially since Zilbalodis and his team have opted out of the cheat-mode of anthropomorphising their cast almost entirely.  The only real stretch made comes from the animals learning how to gently steer a sailboat, otherwise these are all beings acting upon and, in certain cases, learning to move past their baser animal urges.  Obviously, they’re all very cute and each instance of them being put in danger activates a concern in any animal lover, but Zilbalodis and co-writer Matīss Kaža also know that such things provide diminishing returns without further substance.  So, long, near-meditative stretches of film are dedicated to the boat-bound animals interacting either by themselves or with each other.  It’s in the way the Lemur inspects their basket of valuables, constantly checking on their quality with both worry and fascination, and the hurt on its face when Cat nonchalantly knocks one of them off the perch.  It’s the sheer anticipatory joy in the face of the Labrador as it waits for Cat to wake up from a nap, and the contemptuous way Cat goes back to sleep in the most eyeroll motion to not contain an actual eyeroll.  It’s in the little embarrassed dip followed by fur-shake Cat does after recovering from falling into the water in front of Secretarybird.

Through small moments like these, just as much as the bigger set pieces, the sense of community shared between those on the boat grows and the deeper the connection you find in the cast.  Much like Away, Flow is often somewhat surrealist and refuses to concretely explain any of its more symbolic swings – the last 20 minutes feature a bunch which are open to all manner of interpretations, but even before then the post-human world we are guided through has an almost dreamlike logic to its geography and architecture.  The vibes are still the guiding principle to Zilbalodis’ narrative instincts.  But there are more specifics this time around, more character to invest in, and it’s much clearer to read into the themes explored.  Community vs isolation, selflessness vs self-preservation, catastrophic climate change both gradual and sudden, and a paean for togetherness and compassion as the only things that will truly make us stronger.  All recognised through stunning images which bleed sincerity and heartfelt emotion all over the screen with refreshing hope.

If Away was the “student film” – setting aside that many students would kill to make a “student film” as great as Away – then Flow is the refined and fleshed-out real deal.  More ambitious, technical, emotional, and soulful than Zilbalodis’ debut with some of the most affecting sequences of any film released within the last twelve months.  Undeniable proof that he and his team are vital new voices in the worlds of animation and moviemaking as a whole.  An instant classic. I cannot wait to see where Zilbalodis goes from here.