Her home devastated by a flash flood, a Cat quickly finds herself stranded as the waters begin to rise.  As if a figment of her imagination, a boat slowly makes its way towards Cat who, with no other choice, jumps aboard to find it being captained by a friendly Capybara.

Directed by Gints Zilbalodis, who wrote the script along with Matiss Kaza and Ron Dyens, Flow premiered at Cannes where it competed Un Certain Regard.  Missing out on the top prize, the film gained quick acclaim and adoration having been picked up by Janus Films for US distribution, both theatrically and on physical media through The Criterion Collection, and was also submitted to the Academy as Latvia’s entry for Best International Feature at the 97th Academy Awards.  The wordless, 85-minute film also competed for Best Animated Feature that evening, winning that prize but ceding International to Brazil’s I’m Still Here (2024) . 

Set in an undefiled yet fully realized world, at the very least similar to ours, Flow opens following a small black cat being chased through the gardens by a pack of local dogs.  Taking cover, the chase is soon cut short as woodland animals of all shapes and sizes come charging from the opposite direction, not intentionally to Cat’s rescue, but for their own safety as the water level in the nearby stream begins to rise rapidly.  Unable to return to her home, the cat finds shelter atop a large stone statue and with no place else to go takes a tentative break as the waves continue to lap higher and higher, closer to her position.  Accepting her fate against the unmistakable beauty of the orange and purple sunset, she shakes her head in disbelief of what she sees: a small boat making its way towards her.  Jumping aboard as it passes by, she cowers under the bench never taking her eye off of the Capybara captain of the small vessel.  Together, they sail around the now flooded landscape they once called home, picking up a few other displaced animals along the way; a secretary bird, a ring-tailed lemur, and the golden retriever that once gave chase to the small black Cat. 

Flow plays out wordlessly, almost like an extended sequence from Disney’s Fantasia (1940), but here Zilbalodis and Rihards Zalupe provide the score.  The tinkering tones couple perfectly with the bright, watercolor-esque visuals brought to screen using Blender, a free, open-source animation program.  After years of watching the major animation studios homogenize their house styles, Flow bursts onto screens with a bright novelty as if a beloved children’s book were transported from well-worn and oversized pages to the silver screen.  Despite this visual quality, there are some truly frightening moments contained in its brief runtime as Cat is tossed overboard more than once, even encountering a massive Whale making its own way across these new waterways unaware of the small, imperiled feline.  Later, the film opens up to an awe-inspiring, wonderous set piece that does break across the line of realism which Zibalodis had set and respected for all of the prior action of the film. Without and words in his narrative toolkit, we simply accept what we see as a flicker of divine intervention that empowers Cat to continue home on her journey. Its meaning and purpose is a little muddied, but it introduces new colors and combinations to the film and this meeting between Earth and the cosmos is nothing short of beautiful.   

Immediately captivating, the animals in Flow all move with their own personality while never uttering a spoken word.  That we are able to glean such a detailed narrative from what is on paper a bare bones treatment is a testament to the vision of Zilbalodis and the commitment of the team he assembled to bring it to life.  He uses animation and all of its strengths to create a world grounded in our own, but overflowing with imagination and a special kind of magic that can only be witnessed through the awesome power of nature around us.