Virtually anywhere on Earth, disaster is just a random collision of weather patterns away from your doorstep. A hurricane could tear off your roof, a wildfire might burn through your neighbourhood, or a storm could flood your town, sweeping away cars, buildings, and utility poles alike. When the worst happens, how will you respond?
The animated feature Flow asks its viewers to reflect on such distressing questions in the subtle way that narrative films are so well suited for. The movie follows a black cat and the small menagerie of animals it meets as they sail over a drowned landscape, encountering survivors amid abandoned cities. And while each animal relies on instinct to pull through, the story follows a few that are able to overcome their me-first instinct to stick together.
The film pairs the charm of authentically animal-like characters with a simplistic 3D animation style—an unusual combo for feature-length films. It’s no wonder the Latvian film, made by the director Gints Zilbalodis on a modest US$3.7-million budget, managed to shift a Hollywood paradigm: In January, Flow nabbed a Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature, beating out movies from Disney/Pixar, DreamWorks, and the Wallace and Gromit franchise. Now the film is nominated for two Academy Awards on March 2: Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature. No Latvian film has ever been nominated for either award before—let alone won.
It’s rare for independent animation to break into the mainstream. Even films by award-nominated artists, like It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2011) by Don Hertzfeldt and Anomalisa (2015) by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, languish in festival circuits and are often too short on manpower, budget, and time. Laika, a stop-motion animation house responsible for better-known features like Coraline (2009) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), each made on a $60 million budget, didn’t manage to win a Golden Globe in the animation category until 2019, with Missing Link. Foreign films face further barriers: Studio Ghibli, the acclaimed Japanese animation studio behind Totoro (1988), has won an Academy Award for best animated feature only once, for Spirited Away in 2003. Two decades later, the studio’s most recent film, The Boy and the Heron (2023), received its only Golden Globe nomination and award for best animated feature.
In spite of all this, Flow takes up the space of a feature film with confidence and introduces the cat’s daily routine in an indulgent 15-minute sequence before floodwaters begin driving the action, allowing the viewer to delight in the cat’s charming, realistic mannerisms, and get a sense of what will soon be lost.
This story originally appeared in Grist and is part of Covering Climate Now, a global journalism collaboration strengthening coverage of the climate story. You can read the full review at Grist, but be warned, it has spoilers!
