It seems that the Ukrainian premiere of the animated film Flow in November 2024 went almost unnoticed, which is a shame. Because, as it turned out, it is not only the best cartoon of 2024 from an unknown Latvian studio, which beat such high-quality and expensive films as Inside Out 2, Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and The Wild Robot in the competition for the "Oscar", but also an example of the fact that high-quality animated films can be created for very little money and using free software.
| Name | "Flow. The Last Cat on Earth" / Straume / Flow |
| Genre | animated film |
| Director | Ginz Zibalodis |
| Studios | Dream Well Studio, Sacrebleu Productions, Take Five |
| Timing | 1 hour 14 minutes |
| Year | 2024 |
| Link | IMDb |
Flow is the story of a dark gray cat who lives alone in a strange abandoned house on the edge of the forest. But one day a terrible flood occurs, his home is destroyed and the cat ends up on board a felucca, which sails by itself to an unknown destination. There is already one passenger on the sailboat - a large and very phlegmatic capybara, and later a very diverse company of a cat, a dog, a capybara, a lemur and a secretary bird appears on board. At first, the animals do not get along very well with each other, but later together they overcome various difficulties of the journey and become like a family.
The animals in Flow do not have any anthropomorphic features – they are really animals, and they behave like animals, only occasionally demonstrating behavior that is not entirely characteristic of animals. On the other hand, the strange world of the cartoon – a world in which all people have disappeared somewhere – seems to require these animals to change, partially taking on the role of the dominant creatures on this planet. Therefore, our heroes understand each other's body language and although they do not speak, not a single word is heard throughout the entire film, only meows, snorts and croaks, but they understand each other quite well. In addition, some of the animals understand how the simplest mechanisms work, such as the rudder of a sailboat or a block, and can cope with them.
All the characters in Flow are interesting individuals. The cat is just trying to survive, but for some reason becomes the main unifying force of this company. The capybara, as a capybara should be, is calm, phlegmatic, gets along well with others, but knows how to insist on his own if necessary. The lemur is obsessed with human things and a little vulnerable, but he is a good guy and helps when needed. The dog just wants to be in the company and be friends with the cat. But the secretary bird, he is the most mysterious in this team, once he helped the cat and now he suffers because of his compassion.
If you want, you can see an allusion to the fate of refugees sailing by boat to the promised Europe in Flow, but there are actually many more layers here. There are also very obvious allusions to the biblical plot with the Great Flood, the Ark and the secretary bird as the Mission, who ascended to another world. I even saw some references to the very underrated film Seeking a Friend for the End of the World with the wonderful Keira Knightley and Steve Carell. And of course, there is a bit of a Stray vibe here - a cat, the end of the world, but this time no robots.
The director of the cartoon himself says that he was inspired by the works of French film director Jacques Tati and, of course, the cartoons of Miyazaki Hayao, namely the anime Future Boy Conan (1978) based on the book by Alexander Kay. It is not surprising that Flow wants to be compared precisely with the works of Miyazaki. And, in addition, Flow is partly based on the short film Aqua (by Gints Zibalodis) by Gints Zibalodis himself, about a cat who overcomes his fear of the ocean. This theme, the fear of big water and its overcoming, is also present in the feature film.
Flow is incredibly coolly drawn, it's hard to believe that it was made by a small team and using free software, namely the Blender 3D graphics package. It seems that this is the first full-length cartoon created using Blender to win an Oscar. The animation is simply fantastic, with soft lighting, pastel colors and incredible water. Plus, the animals here move very realistically, exactly the way animals of their respective species should move.
It took director Ginz Zibalodis five years to create the 84-minute animation. Zibalodis did not use the storyboards that are supposedly mandatory for animated films, he simply placed his actors in the scene and watched how they could interact with each other and with the environment. At the same time, and this is already some kind of fantasy, when creating Flow, there were no deleted scenes left, everything went into the film.
The creation of Flow cost €3.5 million, which came from a number of Latvian, French, Belgian and pan-European cinema support funds. This amount is approximately 30-50 times less than the budgets of Hollywood cartoons that Flow beat in the competition for the Oscar. The film grossed $36 million at the box office and is now the most famous, most titled and highest-grossing Latvian film. The cat from the cartoon received his own statue in Riga and a postage stamp, the film's Oscar went to the Latvian National Museum of Art, 30-year-old Gints Zibalodis became the "Resident of Riga 2024", and the Latvian film industry is already experiencing an influx of investment.
Ginz Zibalodis was offered to direct a sequel to Flow, but he declined. And although the film ends seemingly midway, it is a finished story that requires no continuation or explanation. Zibalodis is going to start working on another project, this time with dialogue.
If, like us, you missed this exceptional cartoon when it was shown in theaters, we recommend that you still watch Flow online. The film is available on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, Hulu, Max, and other streaming services.
