Imagine a world that has sunken beneath a great flood, leaving a lone sailboat to roam its vast waters. The only ones on board are a unique group of animals, who must put up with each other as they set sail for distant stone pillars—their most likely chance of weathering out the flood.
Such is Flow, a 2024 film directed by Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis and brought to life by a team of Latvian, French, and Belgian studios. The film first made its rounds on the festival circuit starting with a premiere at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival, before seeing a theatrical release later in the year. Its ensuing critical success and accolades, including a recent Golden Globe win for Best Animated Feature—over the likes of Inside Out 2, Moana 2, and The Wild Robot—has led Flow to become hailed as a triumph for indie animation.
Indeed, the film artfully illustrates a tale of survival and companionship through the eyes of an unlikely group of animals: a cat, a capybara, a lemur, a dog, and a secretary bird. Without uttering a single word throughout its 1.5-hour runtime, Flow uses the “show, don’t tell” technique to its full advantage, creating a poignant narrative that lets the animals’ natural selves drive the story in a unique way.
At surface level, Flow is a tale of survival in a post-apocalyptic world. The cat and fellow animals it meets along the way become affected by this force of nature, which in turn seeps into the way they interact with one another. Early on, we see the capybara take the lemur’s supplies for its sailboat, to the latter’s dismay—right before the flooding of its own home forces the lemur aboard the sailboat as well. When a group of dogs board the boat and take advantage of the animals’ supplies, we see the ensuing struggle between the two groups, resulting in one dog devouring the boat’s entire supply of fish. The film illustrates that this is not an easy world to live in, of which the animals are fully aware.
At the same time, this tale of survival ushers in a secondary theme of companionship. Although the animals start out wary of one another, the ordeals they face turn them into a tighter-knit group looking out for each other’s well-being. It does take time for everyone to move past their conflicts, but even after some relapses, certain moments shine through—such as when the secretary bird gets injured by its own flock for protecting the sailboat animals. The cat has some moments of growth of its own, going from being hesitant to interact with others to personally giving a share of its fish catch to each of its companions. It’s clear that by the end, the animals do come around and learn to care for one another, especially after a climactic incident forces them to come together when it really matters.
The scenes demonstrate one of Flow’s key hallmarks: a complete lack of dialogue, narration, and on-screen text (aside from the titles and credits). The story is told entirely through the actions and natural noises of its non-anthropomorphic animal leads—meows, barks, grunts, screeches, and all. In presenting the characters as regular animals, without a spoken word or any other human characteristics, the film illustrates a natural, more organic way of establishing these relationships while retaining the clarity of the film’s themes.
The visual storytelling is augmented by the film’s picturesque scenery, which brings to life a variety of locations. From a jungle with sprawling greenery to an empty, flooded city with stone buildings, these settings evoke their own unique ambiances and present different opportunities for the characters to interact with the environment. Of course, water is a recurring element, and with it the image of a mysterious whale-like marine creature, which crosses paths with the cat several times. A noteworthy aspect of the film is how everything was brought to life via more accessible means: the crew animated the entire film in Blender—a free, open-source software available for anyone to use. The results are nothing short of magnificent; the film’s signature painterly look helps vividly tell its story, immersing audiences into the eyes of its animal leads.
Flow’s minimalist show-don’t-tell style, following a group of animals in their quest to survive and coexist, results in a compelling and visually astounding narrative. Supported by its championing of a more accessible way of generating its characters and scenery, the film has more than earned its status as a triumph for indie animation.(Flow is available to rent or buy on Apple TV).
