Flow

If there’s one thing cats don’t like it’s water – that, and dogs. In Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’s second feature-length animation, Flow, a cute animated cat is forced to confront both. In the first scene, he is chased by a boisterous pack of wild dogs, pursuing him through an idyllic forest landscape. The cat escapes, only to discover that rising water levels are a tougher and undefeatable opponent.

A boat – one of many signs throughout the film of a seemingly lost civilisation – provides a lifeline to the cat, who teams up with a lazy capybara and they are carried across a mystical landscape by the rising water levels. They are later joined by a lemur, who is obsessed with shiny trinkets, the friendliest of the dogs the cat escaped from and an odd giant bird.

Zilbalodis deliberately offers little context to the film’s setting and free-flowing (literally) plot. We don’t know anything about the lost civilisation evident in the backdrop, other than it produced some impressive and culturally eclectic architecture. Nor the origins of the rising water.

The whole film has no dialogue, with the animals’ mannerisms, a dreamy score and yelps taking its place. They are rendered in a fashion that is not entirely realistic, while bearing similarities to their real-life counterparts. Their mannerisms, too, marry realism with a more anthropomorphic style, giving the animals cutesy personalities.

Created in the open-source animation suite Blender, the film may also show a taste of the future, as solo filmmakers increasingly have access to tools that enable them to take on ever more ambitious projects. Flow looks great for what it is – with spinning aerial shots adding real drama to the antics, pitfalls and jumps of its animal protagonists.

Though the themes are left deliberately vague, it’s not too much of a stretch to detect a parable of the changing climate and how we may need to work together to cope. However, what makes Flow an enjoyable film you can bathe in and wash over you is the skill Zilbalodis shows in making what is in effect a silent movie whose animal characters tell its story with their faces and acts.

Ultimately, it lacks the beauty of Hayao Miyazaki’s work or Michaël Dudok de Wit’s The Red Turtle, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a cute, refreshing watch for its relatively short run-time.

Mark Worgan

Flow does not have a UK release date yet.

Read more reviews from our Cannes Film Festival 2024 coverage here.

For further information about the event visit the Cannes Film Festival website here.

Watch a clip from Flow below: