Over the 95-year history of the Academy Awards, a Latvian film has never been nominated for an Oscar. In 2025, it’s possible that Gints Zilbalodis’ celebrated wonder “Flow” will earn not only an animated feature nomination but a spot in the international film category as well. For a film that on its surface is about an unnamed cat who experiences a monstrous flood alongside an overly energetic dog, a friendly South American capybara, a lemur and a statuesque African secretary bird with a damaged wing, these may seem highbrow expectations.
But there’s more to the story, says Zilbalodis, who burst onto the global animation scene after shepherding the 2019 feature “Away” on his own. The filmmaker was inspired to create “Flow,” in part, by a cat he had in high school. At the time, the story manifested itself in a “very simple hand-drawn” short film about a cat and its fear of water — a universal narrative that allowed the story to proceed without a traditional antagonist.
“It’s really just the cat versus nature, or it’s really a cat versus itself. It has to kind of overcome its fears,” Zilbalodis says. “Many years later I decided to revisit this premise.
But this time the focus is more on the cat’s relationship with the other animals. The water is just there, a metaphor basically for this fear, because the cat is very independent, and it has to learn how to work together with others and how to trust them.” With the co-production between Latvi.
