Flow is the kind of film which can only come from someone who has at least three things: a love of the cinema, an idea, and a lot of patience.
Following the story of a cat at what feels like the end of the world trying to survive, Flow shows us life in the animal kingdom in a way no other film has done before.
Made over five years using open-source 3D modelling software Blender for €3.5 million ($AU6 million) with a team of less than 50 people, including sole animator and director Gints Zilbalodis.
The audience joins the lead, an adorable dark grey with big golden eyes, as it is looking for food in a world where only the echo of humanity remains.
The cat clashes with a local pack of dogs before escaping due to a tsunami which rapidly floods the area—only to find the golden retriever has followed it home.
The flood worsens overnight as the water levels continue to rise, splitting the golden retriever and cat up as the dog reunites with its pack and the cat is rescued by a sailboat with a capybara.
Flow does not have a traditional narrative structure and is a slice of life picture as the audience follows the cat and the capybara.
The pair are then joined by a lemur who has a beloved collection of trinkets, a secretary bird who splits from its flock to save the cat, and the golden retriever once again—and its much less well-behaved friends.
All the while, the rains keep pouring and the flood levels keep rising, and it feels like there is no escape from the water.
Flow is unafraid to be original and the most obvious way it distinguishes itself from the others is the lack of dialogue.
There are no humans and only a handful of animals, each played by a real-life version of the animal it is portraying, with one exception: the capybara.
Zilbalodis discusses the voice actor replacement in a post on Instagram, where he highlighted the use of real voices in the film.
“Capybaras don’t speak that much, so it had to be ticked to make it say something, but the voice was very high-pitched and didn’t fit our chill, hippy-like character,” he said.
“We made a creative decision to offer the role to a baby camel instead.”
The lead role is played by a ginger cat called Miut, the pet of sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas.
The animals give real, affecting performances, especially Miut as the onscreen cat mews, meows, hisses, and growls in turn.
None of the animal characters have names in Flow because they don’t need them, nor does the audience need to know anything other than what is presented.
The world they live in is abandoned, rundown, and flooded—but Zilbalodis does not see the value in explaining why it is this way or what happened to make it this way.
Instead, the movie explores the relationships between the animals as they grow closer, learn from one another, and keep each other safe.
Flow is a film for the whole family but it is not a Sylvanian Families-style romp where everything is wrapped up in a neat bow.
The cat spends most of the runtime terrified—it is nearly trampled on more than one occasion, it is snatched out of the air by secretary birds, it nearly drowns.
Cats don’t like water but it is surrounded by it all the time, and does not have the skills to navigate the world it finds itself in and struggles even to feed itself.
But it learns how to live, how to be less afraid, how to hunt, what it means to have friends.
Flow is an emotional tale about animals as they are in real life having to adopt to a flooded world the only way they know how, taking the audience with them on this journey around a destroyed Earth.
The cat is not the only animal to have a profound effect on the audience as all the main characters quickly endear themselves and show their personalities to viewers.
For the more sensitive souls in the audience, viewer discretion is advised as there is violence and animal death in this.
Flow is a mature tale about growing up and adapting to unfamiliar environments which can and do have the ability to not only shape but cause harm.
This film is also one of the most stunningly beautiful pieces of animation out there, with the camera darting in and out of the water in a single shot, the scope of the flooded planet being shown fully, and the sheer detail of the world is jaw dropping.
Flow was a dark horse contender for Best Animated Feature at the 2025 Academy Awards and there is no one out there who could say it wasn’t a very deserved win.
Flow is rated G and is in cinemas now.