FLOW

FOUR AND A HALF STARS When a tsunami floods a young cat's home, he has to learn the power of teamwork to survive.

ANIMATED DRAMA LATVIA #FLOW Starring a cat, a dog, a crane, a lemur and a capybara

For animal lovers and cat people in particular, FLOW can be an anxious experience. Watching Gints Zilbalodis’s hypnotic, dialogue-free adventure feels a little like leaving home wondering whether you’ve shut all the windows: what if my cats escape? The anxiety is real, and Zilbalodis knows it. His unnamed feline protagonist faces every kitty’s worst nightmare — water, and lots of it — in a survival tale that never lets your pulse fully settle. What if that tiny black shorthair on screen drowns in the floodwaters?

Forced onto a drifting sailboat after a biblical deluge, unlikely alliances are formed with a capybara, a golden retriever, a kleptomaniac lemur and a protective bird. Together they dodge whales, navigate ruins and ride out storms, communicating only through growls, squeaks and purrs. What emerges is a tale of trust and camaraderie, as the aloof loner learns to rely on others. It’s moving, funny, and quietly profound — like 1950s Disney crossed with a European art-house survival film.

But the real curiosity of FLOW lies in its look. The animation is dazzling and distracting all at once: freed from real-world physics, Zilbalodis’s camera glides through impossible spaces, a choice that is at once exhilarating and faintly alienating. It swoops and floats then, frequently, weirdly, breaks down into little more than a lo-res GIF. Then we're off again, where sleek backgrounds and weightless foregrounds make for hypnotic vistas, but also lend his film that uncanny quality where cinema reduces to an elaborate screensaver. 

Then we're off again. If there’s repetition (the cat tumbles from the boat more times than is strictly necessary), the emotional investment never wanes. The stakes are simple: will this small black cat, so utterly compelling with every twitch, stretch and paw-flick, survive? That’s more than enough to keep soft-hearted viewers glued to their seats.

FLOW is both a breathless adventure and a sly piece of emotional manipulation. Zilbalodis might not quite convince us that his video-game aesthetic is the future of animation, but his Oscar winning feature does remind us how powerful it is to care - really care - about a creature who can’t say a word.

HOME