Latest news with #Zilbalodis
South China Morning Post
01-04-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
How independent animated films like Oscar winner Flow are taking on Pixar and DreamWorks
When director Gints Zilbalodis accepted his Oscar last month for his ethereal new animated film Flow, he thanked his parents and his 'cats and dogs' – fitting, given that the charming cartoon follows a feline and other animals as they survive a huge flood. Advertisement Then he added a rallying cry for the industry: 'I'm really moved by the warm reception our film has had … and I hope that it will open doors to independent animation filmmakers around the world.' Flow's success in beating huge American studio animations like Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot to the Academy Award, and the Golden Globe back in January, will surely be encouraging to other animators outside Hollywood. Made in Latvia for US$3.7 million (HK$28.8 million), Flow has grossed over 10 times that in ticket sales to date. Perhaps it helps that the dialogue-free fable transcends language barriers, but it is almost impossible to imagine Pixar or DreamWorks creating something this mystical. Without realising it, Zilbalodis may already have his wish, for 2025 seems to be the year of independent animation. Advertisement Flow's fellow Oscar nominee Memoir of a Snail is a melancholic masterpiece, the Australian-made tale of Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook) and Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee), twins living in 1970s Melbourne who are separated after being orphaned.
The Guardian
23-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Flow review – beguiling, Oscar-winning animation is the cat's whiskers
Animation as a medium and fairytales as a subject have always been natural bedfellows. You only need to look at Disney's princess industrial complex to understand that sparkle-dusted happily-ever-after is big business; that the appetite for this particular breed of magical thinking (plus associated merchandising and sequined tat) is enduringly healthy. But the beguiling, Oscar-winning, dialogue-free Latvian animation Flow, which tells of a solitary cat who must learn to cooperate with a mismatched pack of other species to survive a catastrophic flood, is a little different. The fairytale here is not the story the picture tells – it's the story of the film itself. Created by a tiny team with a minuscule budget of about £3m, and rendered entirely on the free open-source 3D software Blender, Flow has been on a journey: its premiere in Cannes; the haul of prizes (54 to date), culminating in the Oscar for best animated feature – that is the stuff of film industry fantasy. While the limited budget certainly shows on screen at times, it also gave director Gints Zilbalodis a considerable degree of creative freedom. With more money comes compromise and consensus film-making, plus a tendency to spoon-feed the audience rather than challenge them. Flow, however, embraces mystery: we see a disaster unfold in the same way the animals do – with no warning or context. Zilbalodis has chosen not to explain the recent history of what seems to be a post-apocalyptic but stunningly verdant, geographically unspecified world. There are signs, in the lush forest, of human habitation and the remnants of civilisation. The cat lives in a house that appears to have once been home to a kitty-obsessed sculptor. Feline statues of varying sizes stand like sentinels in the grounds; a half-finished carving still rests on a workbench. But whether the former inhabitant has been relocated or is long since dead – perhaps along with the rest of humanity – is left open to the audience to interpret, and your reading of the background to the story very much depends on how bleakly apocalyptic your worldview is. The cat's happy solitude in the abandoned building is interrupted by a sudden environmental disaster: rapidly rising flood waters submerge the house and the forest surrounding it. A last-minute reprieve comes in the shape of a drifting sailboat, but the cat is outraged to discover that the vessel must be shared with another passenger – an unflappable and permanently chilled-out capybara. As the boat drifts, it takes on other creatures: an acquisitive ring-tailed lemur with a weakness for shiny trinkets; a wise but haughty secretarybird; and an excitable goofball of a dog. One of the most distinctive elements of Zilbalodis's vision is his decision to let his animals remain animals, instead of attempting to squeeze them into the mould of personhood. The character design and animation of the creatures are where the film's meagre budget is most evident, and yet behavioural details are minutely observed. The cat – a neat, slinky, self-contained little black moggy – is pure feline, from the insouciantly twitching tip of its tail to its testy chirrup of annoyance (all the animal sounds are real, rather than voice actors cosplaying) at having to share a space with other critters. As an alternative to stamping human personalities on them, Zilbalodis instead encourages us to see elements of ourselves in the animals. Being a self-taught animator accustomed to working on his own (his previous feature film, Away, was an entirely solo project created on his computer), the director has revealed in interviews that he identifies most with the self-sufficient cat, who must learn to cooperate with others. And anyone with a tendency to hoard accessories and to overpack when travelling will feel a kinship with the lemur. An eco-parable, Flow is not exactly mining new thematic territory; from Wall-E to Cartoon Saloon's My Father's Dragon to The Wild Robot and numerous Studio Ghibli pictures, animated movies dealing with imminent climate collapse are relatively plentiful. However, the approach of Flow, with its animals'-eye, in-the-moment immediacy and its resistance to cutesiness and anthropomorphism, is bracingly fresh and unexpected. The animation, meanwhile, transcends its financial constraints to achieve moments of shimmering, heart-swelling loveliness. Deliberately enigmatic in approach, with its focus on tiny, cat-level details and a provocative hint that the end of humanity may not be the end of the world, Flow doesn't hammer home a single message. Other takeaways include the need to work together to survive, the value of adaptability – and that cats will always push stuff off tables given half the chance. In UK and Irish cinemas
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Oscar-Winning ‘Flow' Embraced by Moviegoers Worldwide, Grossing More Than $36 Million (EXCLUSIVE)
Gints Zilbalodis' 'Flow,' the dialogue-free survival tale of a solitary cat's journey that won both the Oscar and Golden Globe for best animated feature earlier this year, has been embraced by moviegoers around the world. Budgeted at $3.4 million and sold internationally by Charades, 'Flow' has grossed, as of March 17, more than $36 million worldwide. This includes $4.6 million (€4.5 million) in North America, where it opened in November and was released by Sideshow and Janus Films. The feature went on to gross about $6.7 million in Mexico; $1 million in Brazil; $3.4 million in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay; $2.1 million in its native Latvia; $5.4 million in France (from 682,217 admissions); $1 million in Germany (after its first weekend); $1.3 million in the Netherlands; $1.6 million in Spain; $2.7 million in China (after its third weekend); and $591,000 in Vietnam from 157,000 admissions (after its first weekend), among other territories. More from Variety Behind 'Flow's' Surprise Oscar Win, The First For Latvia: 'I Hope That You'll Open Doors to Independent Animation Filmmakers' How a Lone Feline Upended the Feature Animation Oscar Race With 'Flow' Oscar Nominee 'Flow' Passes $20 Million at Global Box Office in Indie Animation Milestone (EXCLUSIVE) Since premiering in Cannes' Un Certain Regard section, 'Flow' had a spectacular run in the awards circuit, winning over critics, audiences and voters to ultimately thrive in a category that also included 'The Wild Robot,' 'Inside Out 2,' 'Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl' and 'Memoir of a Snail.' 'Flow,' produced by Dream Well Studio, Sacrebleu Prods. and Take Five Prods., also accomplished the rare feat of being nominated for both best animated feature and international film at the Oscars. 'Flow' is set in the aftermath of a terrible flood that ravages the world and follows a stubbornly independent cat who is forced to share a boat and get along with a group of animals. It's been described as an allegory for current issues such as climate change. Zilbalodis, who made his feature debut at the age of 24 with the international hit 'Away,' alluded to the timeliness of the themes tackled in 'Flow' during his acceptance speech at the Oscars. 'We're all in the same boat and we must find ways to overcome our differences and find ways to work together,' he said. The soft-spoken director also pointed out that it was the first time a film from Latvia had ever been nominated and won at the Oscars, and said he hoped that it will 'open doors to independent animation filmmakers around the world.' Before the Oscars, the director also spoke to Variety about the success of 'Flow' despite being a smaller animated feature without dialogue, saying that animation 'can transcend these boundaries.' 'I think people are accepting that animated films can be for kids, which is fantastic, but it can be for all kinds of audiences,' he added. Best of Variety New Movies Out Now in Theaters: What to See This Week Oscars 2026: First Blind Predictions Including Timothée Chalamet, Emma Stone, 'Wicked: For Good' and More What's Coming to Disney+ in March 2025
The Independent
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Flow is a timeless, Oscar-winning tale of survival to delight all cat lovers
Your support helps us to tell the story Read more Support Now From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story. The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it. Your support makes all the difference. Read more When this year's Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature were announced, Flow's director Gints Zilbalodis posted a clip of himself reacting to the nominations. (Months later, he would go on to win the award.) In the video, Zilbalodis is watching from his bedroom, his yellow labrador by his side, not another soul in sight. At the mention of his film, he smiles and mumbles a few words to his companion. But dogs can't speak our language or comprehend the notion of industry recognition. So, instead, Zilbalodis simply nestles his head into the animal's side, speaking in terms that his pet can understand and, in turn, they gently nuzzle him back. It's a beautiful, simple, wordless moment – as beautiful, simple, and wordless as Flow, which the Latvian filmmaker created entirely on the free-to-use open-source software Blender, relying only on a small team of animators and a minuscule budget of $3.7m (£2.8m). That it went on to win the Oscar feels monumental for computer animation as a medium. With Flow, Zilbalodis developed the painterly style he deployed in his 2019 debut Away – a look that's taken root of late in the indie gaming scene, with the likes of Abzu and Journey. Here, Zilbalodis pushes it into a place that feels instinctively cinematic. It's proof there's not only one direction to take, and that Hollywood's fixation on photorealism and A-list voice actors isn't absolute. Flow opens with a slate-grey cat inspecting their own reflection in a puddle. The water itself is completely lifelike while the cat slinks around, flicks their ears, and dilates their golden pupils in a perfect imitation of reality. But their fur is impressionistically rendered, allowing the film to find an ideal balance between technical proficiency (on a limited budget) and the soft, pretty sort of imagery that invokes peace, calm, and meditation. Each hair or blade of grass need not be so defined. The cat nestles at night into a large, but notably empty bed, in what we can presume is an artist's studio. In every corner, there are sketches, carvings, and statues of what was once a beloved pet. But humanity has abandoned the world of Flow, whether by eradication or migration – our only hint at our collective fate in this story are the rapidly rising flood waters that force the cat to leave their safe perch and embark on a journey of survival. Our feline is rescued, at the very last moment, by a boat unexpectedly captained by a lethargic capybara. Later, they're joined by a bouncing yellow labrador (seemingly modelled on Zilbalodis's own); a stoic secretary bird; and an anxious lemur hauling a hoard of treasures. We grasp these characteristics not because the animals tell us so. They communicate only in squawks, chirps, meows, and barks, all recorded from real creatures (though the capybara is, in fact, voiced by a baby camel, out of fear that audiences would find the actual animal's strained cries a little disconcerting). Their journey isn't overly eventful. They explore a flooded city and have a run-in with a whale; there's something else, more enigmatic, and spiritual at play, too, hinted at by cosmic colours in the sky. But the cat's distrustful yowls start to soften as they learn that survival depends on community, and that even if dogs seem obtrusive and lemurs seem fussy, kindness and charity can be expressed in many different forms. Flow is a testament to all that can be achieved when we work as one. Dir: Gints Zilbalodis. U, 84 minutes.
The Independent
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Oscar-winning Flow is a timeless tale of survival to delight all cat lovers
When this year's Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature were announced, Flow 's director Gints Zilbalodis posted a clip of himself reacting to the nominations. (Months later, he would go on to win the award.) In the video, Zilbalodis is watching from his bedroom, his yellow labrador by his side, not another soul in sight. At the mention of his film, he smiles and mumbles a few words to his companion. But dogs can't speak our language or comprehend the notion of industry recognition. So, instead, Zilbalodis simply nestles his head into the animal's side, speaking in terms that his pet can understand and, in turn, they gently nuzzle him back. It's a beautiful, simple, wordless moment – as beautiful, simple, and wordless as Flow, which the Latvian filmmaker created entirely on the free-to-use open-source software Blender, relying only on a small team of animators and a minuscule budget of $3.7m (£2.8m). That it went on to win the Oscar feels monumental for computer animation as a medium. With Flow, Zilbalodis developed the painterly style he deployed in his 2019 debut Away – a look that's taken root of late in the indie gaming scene, with the likes of Abzu and Journey. Here, Zilbalodis pushes it into a place that feels instinctively cinematic. It's proof there's not only one direction to take, and that Hollywood's fixation on photorealism and A-list voice actors isn't absolute. Flow opens with a slate-grey cat inspecting their own reflection in a puddle. The water itself is completely lifelike while the cat slinks around, flicks their ears, and dilates their golden pupils in a perfect imitation of reality. But their fur is impressionistically rendered, allowing the film to find an ideal balance between technical proficiency (on a limited budget) and the soft, pretty sort of imagery that invokes peace, calm, and meditation. Each hair or blade of grass need not be so defined. The cat nestles at night into a large, but notably empty bed, in what we can presume is an artist's studio. In every corner, there are sketches, carvings, and statues of what was once a beloved pet. But humanity has abandoned the world of Flow, whether by eradication or migration – our only hint at our collective fate in this story are the rapidly rising flood waters that force the cat to leave their safe perch and embark on a journey of survival. Our feline is rescued, at the very last moment, by a boat unexpectedly captained by a lethargic capybara. Later, they're joined by a bouncing yellow labrador (seemingly modelled on Zilbalodis's own); a stoic secretary bird; and an anxious lemur hauling a hoard of treasures. We grasp these characteristics not because the animals tell us so. They communicate only in squawks, chirps, meows, and barks, all recorded from real creatures (though the capybara is, in fact, voiced by a baby camel, out of fear that audiences would find the actual animal's strained cries a little disconcerting). Their journey isn't overly eventful. They explore a flooded city and have a run-in with a whale; there's something else, more enigmatic, and spiritual at play, too, hinted at by cosmic colours in the sky. But the cat's distrustful yowls start to soften as they learn that survival depends on community, and that even if dogs seem obtrusive and lemurs seem fussy, kindness and charity can be expressed in many different forms. Flow is a testament to all that can be achieved when we work as one.
