Here's 2025's best family movie of the year (and it's not KPop Demon Hunters)
From the Chinese blockbuster Ne Zha 2 to A Minecraft Movie, this year has offered us plenty of family-friendly options to catch up on. But perhaps the most impactful of them all has been a relatively low-budget feature from Latvia.
We're talking about Flow, an animated odyssey of a cat and his new furry friends as they brave a flood in a creaky wooden boat. That simple premise is elevated by director Gints Zilbalodis's vision and animals that transcend languages and global borders.
Flow opened in cinemas early this year and went on to win Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, cutting above big studio nominees like Disney's Inside Out 2 and DreamWorks's The Wild Robot.
What makes Flow 's win all the more commendable is that the entire film was designed and animated in the free-to-use online software Blender. In fact, the Latvian filmmaker and animator even gave a shout-out to Blender during his acceptance speech.
With children's animation traditionally relying on talking animals and cartoonish mannerisms, Flow is slightly unconventional in the sense that it emphasises hyper-realistic sounds and movements of its animals. The result is a hard-hitting watch without any spoken dialogue, further enhanced by the ambient, minimalist score co-composed by Zilbalodis himself.
But with that being said, there's also plenty of fun to be had with Flow for younger audiences. The feline protagonist's curiosity leads him to a sleepy, Zen-like capybara, a hyperactive Labrador, and a kleptomaniac lemur.
The talkless banter between the cat's four-legged companions, along with the visually immersive Blender worlds, makes Flow the finest family movie of the year. Quite the relaxing antidote to an overstimulated, screen-addicted generation.
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BBC News
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