"Flow" - Calm. Chilling. Cat.

Josh
Mar 10, 2025
4 min read

Updated: Apr 24, 2025

Gints Zilbalodis (2024)

Blender represent.

So I watched this movie when it first came out and I had the notes for this sitting around while thinking, “I’ll get to it eventually”. But now that it’s won an Academy Award for the 2025 Best Animated Feature, I’ve gotta talk about it now. All I knew about this movie was that a lot of people on Letterboxd were going wild for it and the premise of “a cat takes refuge on a boat with various animals”. But what I didn’t know, was that this movie was made by a tiny crew, with writer/director Gints Zilbalodis at the helm, and all it was done in Blender. For those who don’t know, Blender is a free open-source software used for 3D modelling, animation, and rendering (also, it’s my software of choice when doing modelling work, so awesome to see it get a shout out). Even more impressive, this was his first time using Blender. When he set out to create flow 5 years ago, he was learning Blender getting advice and support from professionals around him. The result is an amazing stylised singular simple vision, a consistent passionate voice from start to end. And it paid off!

The story itself is very simple. We open our lead, Cat, exploring a world abandoned by humans. Although it’s not explicitly mentioned, the absence of any human life can be interpreted with a few shots of a recently occupied house. In the brief time that Cat explores the house, water begins to flood the surrounding area. Taking refuge on a statue, they’re rescued by a dazed Capybara who’s sailing a small wooden boat. The number of friends on the boat continues to grow with a Ring-Tailed lemur and a Golden Retriever, who that Cat had a previous interaction with, then a large imposing Secreterybird.

Each animal has a distinct and well-defined personalities. The Capybara has the personality of a stoner who’s happy to sleep and just go with the… flow. Our Golden Lab is like an excited child who’s loyal to a fault. The Ring-Tailed Lemur has an obsession with collecting as many shiny and eye-catching trinkets as he can get his hands on during these dire times. And we get to see them get excited as they pass other Lemurs celebrating their collection. Then there’s the Secreterybird , who saved Cat on numerous occasions, where such a situation results in the Secreterybird getting its wing broken via an alpha bird. Leaving him with no other options than to tag along with the band of misfit animals.

Over time you get accustom to the fact the only source of dialogue you hear is just animal calls and barks as they get themselves into various mishaps. Even being animals, you see them grow as they break through their own biases and baked-in characteristics to help one another out in a time of need. Not only maintaining the survival of their species but all species. Except for fish, they can devoured constantly. Yet none of the animals break their anatomical structure, as they all act like how they would in real life, having to use what they’re capable of to solve issues. This also goes for expressions and emotions, everything is done through wide eyes, screeches, a slow walk, flopping down on the ground, or turning their back on another animal. And it’s amazing how Zilbalodis was able to pull this off with a small team, while a multi-billion dollar company continues to struggle to pull it off when trying to make “live-action” remakes of their older works. Not to name names but the movie that came to mind rhymes with the Kion Ling.

And unlike the “live-action” version of the Kion Ling, Flow visually is mesmerising. It has a cell-shaded art style that has been compared to the feeling of a video game. There were a couple of times I was thinking of various video games while watching. I got splashes of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo, 2017) with the art style while getting vibes of titles like Abzu (Giant Squid, 2016) or Journey (Thatgamecompany, 2012). The calm simplistic demeanor of the story is meditative yet, as the darker or spiritual themes start to rear their head it’s like a splash of water, making those scenes all the more impactful. Sailing back to films that it reminded me of, the vibrancy of the art acts as a camouflage to hide its more adultish themes which sent me thinking of Hayao Miyazaki films. I wouldn’t rule this out as a children’s movie because of the more intense moments and abstractness of the ending. In fact, kids should be exposed to the darker sides of films within reason to ensure they get exposed to a wider range of emotions other than… Skibidi Toilet and Minions (I don’t know what kids watch). Yet they’re themes that should be familiar enough as we learn to trust in others no matter how different in order to complete a mutual goal. In this case, survival. While a message that feels obvious but is not addressed at all, the human impact on climate change is something open for people to interpret. If they want to view this as a climate alarmist movie then it still works as someone who just see the flooding as a freak natural disaster.

The fact that Zilbalodis was able to beat out big animation giants like Disney/Pixar and Dreamworks is refreshing to see. Although out of all the nominations I would’ve been happy if either this or Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (2024), or Memoir of a Snail (2024) won. But it shows how the language and power of cinema can create an emotional connection to your characters, even when they’re just animals floating on a boat.