Flow (2024 film) facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Flow
International theatrical release poster
Directed by	Gints Zilbalodis
Produced by	Matīss Kaža Gints Zilbalodis Ron Dyens Gregory Zalcman
Written by	Gints Zilbalodis Matīss Kaža
Music by	Gints Zilbalodis Rihards Zaļupe
Cinematography	Gints Zilbalodis
Editing by	Gints Zilbalodis
Studio	Dream Well Studio Sacrebleu Productions [fr] Take Five [fr]
Distributed by	Baltic Content Media (Latvia) UFO Distribution (France) Le Parc Distribution (Belgium)
Release date(s)	22 May 2024 (2024-05-22) (Cannes) 29 August 2024 (2024-08-29) (Latvia) 30 October 2024 (2024-10-30) (France) 15 January 2025 (2025-01-15) (Belgium)
Running time	84 minutes
Country	Latvia France Belgium
Budget	€3.5 million
Money made	€50 million

Flow (Latvian: Straume) is an animated adventure film from 2024. It was directed, written, and produced by Gints Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža. This movie is a team effort between Latvia, France, and Belgium. It tells a story without any talking, following a cat trying to survive a huge flood with other animals.

The making of Flow began in 2019 and took about four and a half years. The animation was created using a free computer program called Blender. The filmmakers were inspired by the artist Jacques Tati and the cartoon Future Boy Conan. Interestingly, they didn't use traditional storyboards, and there are no deleted scenes from the film.

Flow first showed at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2024. It was then released in Latvian movie theaters on August 29, 2024. The film was highly praised by critics and broke many records in Latvia. It became the most-watched movie ever in Latvian theaters. Flow also won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature at the 97th Academy Awards. It was also nominated for Academy Award for Best International Feature Film as Latvia's entry. This made it the first film from Latvia to win and be nominated for an Academy Award. It also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. Both awards were later shown at the Latvian National Museum of Art.

Story of Flow

The movie starts with a dark grey cat exploring a forest. A group of dogs comes to a river to catch fish. When two dogs fight over a fish, the cat quickly grabs it. The dogs chase the cat, but it gets away. The cat then sees many deer running away before it gets caught in a big flood. Both the cat and the dogs survive the flood and find higher ground.

New Friends and Rising Waters

A yellow Labrador Retriever follows the cat to its old cabin, which has wooden cat statues. They both notice the water level keeps rising. The Labrador joins the other dogs on a boat. As the flood covers the cabin, the cat climbs onto a giant cat statue. The water keeps rising until it reaches the top of the statue's head. Just as the statue goes completely underwater, the cat jumps onto a passing sailboat. A capybara is already on board.

The next morning, the boat sails through a forest that is partly underwater. The cat falls overboard and starts to sink while trying to avoid a white secretarybird. A large whale saves the cat from drowning. But then another secretarybird grabs the cat. While flying, the cat sees huge stone pillars far away. The secretarybird then drops the cat back onto the boat.

More Animals Join the Crew

As the water keeps rising, the capybara invites a ring-tailed lemur to join them on the boat. The lemur brings a basket of small treasures. While sleeping, the cat dreams of deer circling it and sees the stone pillars again before being swept away by a flood. The cat then wakes up. Later that day, the three animals land on shore. The Labrador joins them again. They meet a group of secretarybirds that are not friendly. This makes the cat run away. The younger secretarybird that first met the cat tries to ask its leader to spare the cat's life. But it loses a fight and hurts its wing. The other birds leave it behind. Since it can't fly well, the injured secretarybird joins the boat crew.

Adventures in the Flooded City

The crew arrives at a city that is half-underwater, near the big stone pillars. The Labrador takes the lemur's glass float to the secretarybird to play fetch. The secretarybird kicks it off the boat. The lemur gets angry and starts fighting with the secretarybird, who is steering the boat. Because they lose control, the boat's mast gets stuck in a tree. The whale jumps out of the water, and the waves it creates help free the boat from the tree. The cat learns from the capybara and gets better at swimming and catching fish. Later, the crew sees the other dogs stuck in a bell tower and rescues them.

The Pillars and a Mysterious Light

As the boat sails through the huge stone pillars during a strong storm, the secretarybird flies away. The cat falls off the boat but swims to shore. It climbs stairs to the top of a stone pillar. There, it finds the secretarybird on a labyrinth-like carving on the floor. For a short time, gravity disappears, and a bright portal opens above them. They both float for a moment. The cat floats back to the ground, but the secretarybird flies toward the light and disappears.

The cat quickly goes down the stairs and tries to swim back to the boat, but it is too far away. It finds the lemur's glass float and uses it to stay on top of the water. The water level drops quickly as huge cracks open in the earth, draining the water. While walking through the forest, the cat finds the lemur. They find the boat hanging on a tree. The dogs jump off the boat. Just as the capybara is about to leave, the tree starts to break. The cat climbs the tree and passes the boat's rope to the lemur and dogs, who pull the boat toward them. When a rabbit runs by, the other dogs leave the Labrador and its friends. The cat falls but is caught by the capybara. They both manage to jump off the boat before it falls with the tree into a deep ditch below.

New Beginnings

Just as the crew celebrates, another group of deer runs by. The cat runs away but stops when it sees the whale stuck on the ground in the forest. The cat comforts the whale and looks at the massive stone pillars. Sad about the whale, the cat sees its reflection in a puddle of water. Its friends then join it.

After the movie credits, a whale is seen swimming on the ocean.

Making the Film

Gints Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža worked together for the film.

In 2012, Gints Zilbalodis made a short film called Aqua. It was about a cat overcoming its fear of the ocean. This short film gave him the idea for Flow. Zilbalodis used a different animation program called Maya for his earlier films, including Away in 2019. That year, he switched to Blender because it could show animations in real-time. He used Blender to animate Flow.

Production of Flow started in 2019. It took Zilbalodis and his team about five and a half years to finish the movie. The film has no dialogue, meaning no characters speak. Zilbalodis said he was inspired by Jacques Tati, a famous filmmaker, and the anime series Future Boy Conan. They did not use traditional storyboards. Instead, Zilbalodis placed the animals in the scene and "explored them with the camera." There are no deleted scenes from the film.

Two other companies, Take Five [fr] and Sacrebleu Productions [fr], joined the project in 2022. They helped with character animation and sound. While Flow was still being made, parts of the film were shown at a film event in Bordeaux in 2022. The movie received money from several groups, including the National Film Centre of Latvia and the Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée in France. The animation for the film was completed in France and Belgium.

An episode of the LTV documentary series Aizliegtais paņēmiens about the film's production was released in March 2025.

Animals in Flow

Miut, the cat of sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas, provided the voice of the cat in Flow

To make the animals look and act real, the filmmakers studied capybaras and lemurs at zoos, like the Izu Shaboten Zoo in Japan. The whale in the movie was first going to be based on a real whale. However, it was changed to look more like a mythical creature. Also, the secretarybird was originally planned to be a seagull. But they changed it because a seagull was too small for the story. The boat used by the main characters was inspired by Mediterranean feluccas, which are traditional sailboats.

Sound Design for Animals

The sound designer, Gurwal Coïc-Gallas, used real animal sounds for each character in the film. Coïc-Gallas's own cat, named Miut, made the sounds for the cat in Flow. For the capybara, they found that the actual sound of a capybara being tickled was too high-pitched and not peaceful enough. So, they tried sounds from a moose or a llama before choosing the sound of a baby camel instead. The sound of a tiger, made lower in pitch, was used for the whale.

Music in Flow

Flow: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Soundtrack album by Gints Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe
Released	1 November 2024 (2024-11-01)
Genre	Film score
Length	53:51
Label	Milan
Producer	Gints Zilbalodis

The music for the film was created by Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe. It was mixed by Mikko Raita. Zilbalodis composed seven hours of music, but only about 50 minutes of it was used in the final film. The soundtrack was released on streaming media platforms by Milan Records on November 1, 2024.

All songs written and composed by Gints Zilbalodis and Rihards Zaļupe. 

Film Release

Flow was first shown in the Un Certain Regard section of the 2024 Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2024. It was the first Latvian film shown in that section since The Shoe in 1998. It was also shown at the 2024 Annecy International Animation Film Festival. There, it won the Jury Award, the Audience Award, and the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution. Flow also received the Grand Prize for Feature Animation at the 2024 Ottawa International Animation Festival. The film was screened at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival and 2024 Vancouver International Film Festival. It was also invited to the 'Open Cinema' section at the 29th Busan International Film Festival in October 2024. Flow won the Special Jury Award at the 2024 Melbourne International Film Festival.

Flow had its premiere at the Splendid Palace [lv] cinema in Riga, Latvia, on August 28, 2024. It was released across Latvia the next day. UFO Distribution released the film in theaters in France on October 30, 2024. It had a limited release in the United States by Janus Films and Sideshow in New York and Los Angeles on November 22, 2024. It then expanded to 200 theaters on December 6, 2024. The film was released in Belgium on January 15, 2025. It opened in 800 theaters in Mexico on January 1, 2025. PVR Inox Pictures released Flow in India on February 28, 2025. Madman Entertainment released the film in Australia on March 20, 2025.

A board game based on the film was released in January 2025.

Home Viewing

Flow was released in the UK in 4K Blu-ray by Curzon Film on June 30, 2025. This version includes the short films Aqua and Priorities, and a documentary about the making of the film called Dream Cat. In the United States, Flow will be released in 4K Blu-ray by The Criterion Collection on September 23, 2025. This Blu-ray has similar features to the UK release. It also includes Zilbalodis' 2019 first feature film, Away.

Film's Impact

Because Flow was so popular in Latvia, a statue of the cat from the movie was put up in Riga. It was first placed outside the Freedom Monument. In April 2025, it was moved to the Town Hall Square. Also, the national Latvian post service, Latvijas Pasts, released a special postage stamp to celebrate the film. Gints Zilbalodis was honored as "Riga Citizen of the Year" in 2024. The success of Flow also led to more money being invested in the Latvian film industry. Zilbalodis mentioned that he was asked to make a sequel to Flow. However, he chose to work on a different project that will include dialogue.

More to Explore

• List of submissions to the 97th Academy Awards for Best International Feature Film
• List of Latvian submissions for the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film
• Minimalist film

See also

In Spanish: Flow (película de 2024) para niños