Latvian animation phenomenon Gints Zilbalodis follows up his extraordinary debut, Away, with more beautifully rendered imagery in Flow, an Apocalypse Now-style quest, but with animals instead of people.
They’re in a boat, in other words, sailing up a waterway and having adventures on the way, none of which ever look like they’re going to be fatally dangerous. If you were going to level an accusation at this gorgeous movie, its cuteness might be where you’d start.
For those who don’t know Zilbalodis’s story, he’s the guy who couldn’t get a job after finishing college and so decided to write his own ticket, making Away all on his own, in his bedroom, taking on the duties of director and writer, animator, art director, producer and composer. It took him five years and what an achievement it was – simple but powerful, mythic almost in its bold simplicity.
Flow isn’t stylistically so far away from Away. The bold blocks of colour are still there, and Zilbalodis’s realistic “camera” – steadicam here, handheld there, more traditionally mounted at other times – gives his story a real belt of intimacy.
As for story, there isn’t much of one. It starts with a timid cat looking at its reflection in a puddle, then off we set as the cat is chased first by dogs, then stags and then is nearly swept away by an inundation of water that’s rising so fast that it appears to be obliterating everything in the world.
There is evidence of humanity’s presence but there are no actual people in this story. An empty house early on. Later a boat, which the cat jumps into to escape a watery grave, only to find that there’s already a capybara on board. They will later be joined by a dog, a bird and a lemur, and together these animals will become a gang, a tight crew on this boat sailing to nowhere in particular.
There is just a touch of anthropomorphism in these animals. Would they really bond together like this? It seems unlikely. But in most respects the animals stay as animals, with Zilbalodis using actual animal sounds – the mew, the bark, the chirp etc – to give the individuals a voice.
No speech. No voiceover. No subtitles, just as it was in Away. Nor any explanation at all as to why the world has drowned. It might be global warming, it might be a freak flooding event, we just don’t know.
That’s probably a good thing, considering how aerated climate change gets people. One thing people of all political persuasions can get behind, though, is adorable animals. And they are pretty endearing, this timid cat, excitable dog, acquisitive lemur, haughty bird and dozy capybara (who’s actually “voiced” by a camel, apparently).
So if you’re the sort of person who will click on a clip of a dog being saved from a raging torrent – and who isn’t? – this will scratch that itch. Fish don’t qualify for the cute treatment, however – lunch!
Zilbalodis did not make Flow on his own. A team of about 50 – a co-writer (Matīss Kaža), a bunch of animators, sound people, composers – helped him. It’s still, by modern animation standards, a tiny team. The makeshiftness of Away is perhaps not as evident. This is slicker, more ambitious, less minimalist, with more attention to the rendering of light and water. Both genuinely seem to flow. And it’s all done on Blender, the open-source software anyone can download. So what are we all waiting for, right?
It does not have quite the same jaw-dropping impact of Away, but that may just be the observation of someone who has had his jaw dropped to the floor once already. If you haven’t seen Away, I urge you to see it, then watch this, rather than the other way around. That way you can see Zilbalodis’s development. Where will he go next?
Flow – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
