Talk about a little movie that could.
“Flow” premiered at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival. A few weeks later it won several awards at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, and more recently was named the best animated film of the year by the New York Film Critics Circle, National Board of Review, Los Angeles Film Critics Association and European Film Awards and earned nominations from the Golden Globes and Independent Spirit Awards. It is eligible in the Oscars’ Best Animated Feature category as well as the Best International Feature category, where it is Latvia’s entry and made the 15-film shortlist.
This is an exceptional showing for any animated feature, much less a wordless one that cost less than $4 million and was animated entirely using Blender, a free-to-use software.
Writer/director Gints Zilbalodis, making his second animated feature, can trace the origin of “Flow” back to high school. That’s when he made a short film about a cat who is afraid of water. He revisited the premise when developing Flow, only this time the cat is joined by several other animals, including a lemur and a capybara, as they try to survive a cataclysmic, largely unexplained flood. The plotline became a metaphor for making the movie. “I wanted to tell a story about how I was learning to work together with a team, as I did with this film, which is the first project I’ve made with a proper budget and a team,” Zilbalodis said. “Before, I was doing everything myself. People tell you to write what you know, but I was writing what I was going through at that point. It wasn’t something from my past. It was very fresh in my memory.”
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There were other things Zilbalodis wanted with “Flow:” He wanted to tell a story without dialogue. He wanted to have his animals “act like animals,” instead of, as in most animated features, humans wearing animal costumes. He wanted to tell a “cat-versus-nature story,” one free of antagonists besides the cruelty of the natural world. “There’s no evil characters,” Zilbalodis said. “That was exciting to me—to find this nuance in all of these characters and hopefully make them relatable.”
To tell the story, Zilbalodis used a series of long, unbroken takes that call to mind the work of Alfonso Cuarón and probably any recent videogame you’ve played. It is unique and immersive. “I’ve been exploring this technique for a while, and that’s why I decided to switch from hand-drawn animation, which I began with, and learn computer animation,” he said. “I wanted to express myself with the camera and how it moves in choreography with these characters. It’s almost like a dance between them.” The filmmaker was quick to note that he wanted the camerawork to feel “grounded.” “It shouldn’t attract attention to itself too much, but it really draws you in,” he said.
He decided to use Blender because he had a relatively small team and was trying to work quickly. Blender allowed him to explore the blocking of sequences without having to render too many technical details. “I don’t have to wait for the rendering,” Zilbalodis said. He could embrace “spontaneity” in ways other productions couldn’t. “I can explore different versions and variations and see how the light is cast on these sets and characters, which influences where I put the camera.” On bigger productions, different departments supervise the camera and the lighting. “For me, it’s all connected,” he said. “I like having these real-time tools.”
“Flow” mixes environmentalism and mysticism, leaving more questions than answers. (Again: the animals do not talk.) There is, for instance, a giant cat statue, which is never explained but Zilbalodis connected with, having spent a fair amount of his own life chipping away at stories about cats. There’s even a post-credits sequence pointing to where the story could go. Not that Zilbalodis is heading there. “I’m not really interested in telling what happens next,” he said. “I feel like I explained everything I needed to explain, and I’m also interested in telling original stories, so I don’t want to repeat myself.”
This story first appeared in the Awards Preview issue of TheWrap magazine. Read more from the Awards Preview issue here.
