It’s a movie centred on a cat, but Flow has become the mighty mouse of the past year’s animated films. Last week, the enchanting, dialogue-free Latvian feature added the Golden Globe for best animated film to its haul of awards. It was up against two Disney mega-hits (Inside Out 2, Moana 2), a Dreamworks biggie (The Wild Robot), and the latest Wallace & Gromit. It’s likely to be up against them again in the Oscars.
Flow has become a critics’ darling since it debuted in the Un Certain Regard section at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. It’s had comparisons to the Japanese anime of Studio Ghibli, to hand-drawn Disney classics like Bambi, and to the immersiveness of video games.
It’s a perilous adventure and something that feels like it could be an ancient fable. It’s about a cat whose home is devastated by a great flood, and who must overcome its fear of water and other animals to survive, sailing on a small boat through a world seemingly abandoned by humans.
Flow’s US$4 million budget is a small fraction of its competition. It was made with open-source animation software with a team of fewer than 50 from Latvia, France and Belgium, led by 30-year-old director Gints Zilbalodis, who is also listed as writer, producer, editor, composer, art director and cinematographer.
Flow is his first film in which he wasn’t slaving over a hot laptop all by himself. The story beginnings of the film came from one of his earlier, simpler shorts, Aqua, about a cat stuck on a boat after a flood. In Flow, the cat is joined by a pack of dogs, a lemur, a capybara and a secretary bird. Zilbalodis spoke to the Listener on a Zoom call from his home in the Latvian capital of Riga.
I take it your film has done well in Latvia?
Yeah, in Latvia, it was a huge hit. Independent animation isn’t usually a big box office draw, and usually people don’t watch films like this in Latvia but it’s like the No 2 Latvian film of all time, so it’s been very warmly embraced here.
In terms of its sensibility or even the imaginary environments it depicts, how Latvian is the film?
Maybe at the beginning of the film where the cat is at home, there’s part of my home. But the places the characters go through are quite fantastical, and they’re kind of influenced by many different places in the real world. We built our own kind of fantasy version combining different influences from Southeast Asia and South America and also European architecture. I wanted it to feel kind of timeless and that there’s no modern-day buildings or skyscrapers. Maybe there are not direct references to Latvian landscape, but I think it’s there as part of the character – the stubbornness of the cat, or the introverted aspect of the cat, which I can relate to. Having this cat learn to collaborate and to trust others and go on this journey, which I had to do myself while making this film, because for me it was the first time working with a team. To me it’s a personal film first, rather than something that represents Latvia.
It’s a universal story, as well. That’s something that animation is especially good at – overcoming cultural boundaries and creating a shared experience. There’s something, I think, especially with animals when it becomes kind of allegorical, where we can imagine or interpret them using our own experiences … I think it’s interesting that different people interpret it in very different ways. They can kind of project their own experiences onto the film.
The flood could be seen as a message about sea level rise.
I’m really more concerned with the experience of it, and the emotion rather than sending a message. I wasn’t really considering the biblical aspect of a Noah’s Ark or the climate change aspect. That wasn’t how it started. Really, it started with the cat and its fear of water, which is something everyone understands, but I needed to show it in the scariest way possible. So that’s why it’s a flood. I think film-making is more like music than novels or literature. It’s more about the experience and evoking emotion.
How did you decide on the menagerie?
So, there’s a dog in the film, which is also inspired by my two dogs and the cat is inspired by cats I’ve had growing up. So, I knew cats and dogs quite well. I’ve never had a pet capybara, and I did have to study them a little bit … he’s like the mentor figure, almost. When everyone is fighting, the capybara is always, despite everything, somewhat at peace and kind of pretty chill. I relate to the cat, but I wish I could be the capybara.
The film shows that dogs aren’t the brightest creatures.
The main dog character, I think, is a very good dog, but this story is told from a cat’s point of view so it’s not a very objective view of the dogs. I’ve made other films where maybe the dogs are shown in a better light. But I love dogs, and I have dogs, and feel a little bit bad if that’s people’s interpretation. Maybe I’ll do a dog film next to kind of make up for this.
How have you been coping with all the attention your film has been getting?
Yeah, it’s quite intense. We finished the film right before the premiere at Cannes and we went straight to the festival, and pretty much ever since then, I’ve been on tour. I’ve lost count of how many places I visited, but it’s been non-stop for what is now seven months. Yeah, of course, it’s a good problem to have.
It’s such a great thing that the film is shown theatrically in so many places, which is a privilege, and I’m trying my best to help that, because it’s really hard to compete with the big studios with their enormous marketing budgets. Of course, every film-maker will say that they want their films to be seen on the big screen, but because there’s no dialogue on this, it’s especially important because you have to pay attention to what’s happening, and you can’t be having dinner or doing laundry or be on your phone at the same time. You really have to pay attention.
Given what you’ve achieved with very little money, with software that is available to anyone, in a story with animal characters who don’t speak or sing, what does Flow say about the state of animated movies and the industry behind them?
I think there’s been an emergence of independent animation recently, especially in Europe. We’re very lucky to have public funding, because it’s really hard to compete with the big US studios. Also with a smaller budget, you can take more creative risks, and not just tell different types of stories, but be more creative with the way that they’re told. I’m excited about the future of independent animation, because the big studios really play it safe, and they do a lot of sequels and remakes, and that’s just how the industry is at this moment. But in this independent area, we will see more originality and so I’m really excited about that.
Flow is in cinemas now.
