It’s likely that you’ve never seen an animated feature film quite like Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow, a wordless film that follows the journey of a cat as it first tries to escape a pack of dogs, and then ends up working with a variety of animals to try to survive a massive flood. 

Having premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, Zilbalodis’ visually-striking animated film has already won four awards at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival back in June, and Latvia has selected it as its official submission for the 97th Oscars in the International Feature category. What’s even more amazing about Flow is that Zilbalodis didn’t just write and direct it but also handled the designs, the cinematography, edited the film, and composed the score along with Rihards Zalupe.

Cinema Daily US spoke with Zilbalodis over Zoom for the interview you can watch above, where we spoke about the inspiration for the film, which includes elements of Zilbalodis’ earlier short Aqua, but is far more refined in terms of its animation and storytelling. Zilbadolis also spoke to us about studying animals in order to get their movements right, and the sound work involved to make them even more lifelike.

Flow will opens in select theaters on November 22 with plans to expand wider in December.

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Director: Gints Zilbalodis

Screenwriter: Gints Zilbalodis, Matīss Kaža

Producer: Matīss Kaža, Gints Zilbalodis,Ron Dyens, Gregory Zalcman

Production Co: Take Five, Sacrebleu Productions, Dream Well Studio

Distributor: Sideshow/Janus Films

Rating: PG (Peril|Thematic Elements)

Genre: Animation

Language: N/A

Release Date (Theaters): November 22, 2024 (limited)

Runtime: 1 hour, 24 minutes

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You can watch the trailer below: