By ANNATERESS FABRIS*

Considerations on the film by Gints Zilbalodis, currently showing in cinemas.

1.

One of the aspects that immediately catches the eye is Flow (Straume) is the absence of dialogue, replaced by meows, barks, croaks, squeaks, moans, chirps, more appropriate to the condition of the protagonists – a heterogeneous group of animals trying to survive a sudden flood on a drifting sailboat – and other animals present in nature.

Director Gints Zilbalodis believes the lack of dialogue made it Flow “a more cinematic film”, that is, capable of restoring cinema to its primordial character: sound and image. Furthermore, the choice of computer animation allowed the use of more complicated camera movements than in a live action and experiment with music and sound.

The intention of making a non-anthropomorphic cartoon led the Latvian director to choose to record the vocalizations of the protagonist species of the narrative – an elusive and unsociable cat, a clumsy and childish dog, a calm and self-assured capybara, an insecure and junk-collecting lemur, a haughty and solitary secretary bird –, which translated into some challenges for the sound engineer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas, tasked with finding specific sounds for each type of emotion.

It is known that the cat's sounds were recorded in the house itself, that the lemurs only emitted three distinct vocalizations and that the greatest difficulty was presented by the capybara, whose recording did not match the character's personality. As Gints Zilbalodis recalls, in this case it was necessary to take "some artistic liberties" because the voice "was very shrill and unpleasant and this character is very calm and peaceful. We needed something deeper, so the capybara's voice is a baby camel."

According to the director, the decision to present the world from an animal's point of view made “things more emotional, especially because the cat is small and therefore everything seems bigger and the approaches more important”. Immersed in the eternal present, characteristic of their condition, the animals were designed against the grain of the usual photorealistic 3D animation technique.

Its flat, pixelated texture, devoid of detail, is far removed from the high-resolution fur and plumage, close to reality due to its flawless appearance, of so many recent achievements, of which the most emblematic example is Mufasa: The Lion King (Mufasa: the lion king, 2024). This “slightly more rustic” drawing style is considered by Luiz Santiago to be congenial to a plot that aims to convey “a vision that encompasses and accepts imperfections, the diversity of perspectives in relationships and the transience of life”.

Although the appearance of the animals is not photorealistic, their behavior is nevertheless accurately captured by animators led by Léo Silly-Pélissier, who carried out exhaustive research on the internet into the animals' movements and expressions. The black kitten with amber eyes, for example, wanders through the forest, hunts, runs away from a pack of dogs, climbs trees, sleeps, licks itself, saves itself from a stampede of deer, obeys its survival instinct when faced with a raging flood, stretches, vomits, plays, learns to swim and fish with the gestures typical of its nature.

This does not prevent Gabriele Niola from seeing their realistic movements, as well as those of their companions, in theatrical terms. According to him: the animals “enter and leave the plot and scenes as if they were in the theater, with a little emphasis and each in their own way”.

The stylized appearance of the animals is contrasted with the realistic treatment of the environments and nature, full of details and close to a pictorial visuality for which David Rooney evoked the name of the Danish artist Peder Mork Monsted. Achieved with hand-drawn drawings, this realism translates, for Angelica Arfini, into tactile sensations that emanate from the grass, water, sun and rain.

In this context, the treatment given to the water by just two animators stands out, when the usual thing in large studios is for dozens of professionals to be involved in the task. The water, which dictates the rhythm of the narrative, is a dense mass when it appears in the form of a flood; when it surges during storms that endanger the lives of the animals transported by the boat; when it transforms into impetuous waterfalls thanks to a geological fault that drains it, causing the forest to emerge again. But it is also a tranquil expanse, as it is navigated by the animals' boat. The most notable effects are obtained in the underwater sequences, when it becomes translucent, illuminated by the sun's rays and splashed with the colors of the countless fish that inhabit its depths.

Gints Zilbalodis did not use sophisticated resources to carry out the animation process. Instead, he used the graphics software Blender, which works in real time and does not allow for more detailed and refined treatment of the animals and scenery. The operation was carried out in two stages: the pre-visualization of the film, with framing and shots, done in the software; the animation, done in French and Belgian studios. The rendering, that is, the finalization of the process, was done on the director's notebook, but this did not prevent the film from having tactile and pictorial suggestions.

2.

Several articles about the film released in 2024 highlight the relationship between its visual aspect and that of the videogames, highlighting the name of the Japanese designer Fumito Ueda, author of Ico (2001) Shadow of the colossus (2005) The last guardian (2016), whose distinctive features are the economy of plot and script, the use of minimal dialogue, fictional languages ​​and overexposed and desaturated light. This relationship is visible above all in the sequence shots that can last up to five minutes, thanks to which Flow is organized as a game, leading to an immersion in the cat’s “at once fearful and exploratory body”, as Valentine Guégan emphasizes.

Gabriele Niola focuses more on this issue, focusing on three elements: low resolution and poor lighting; fantastic implications of the ending; concentration on movements, used to communicate the director's vision of the characters.

Water plays a fundamental role in the plot, carrying two ambivalent symbolic meanings: source of life and source of death, creator and destroyer. It is significant that in the film the motif appears, at first, as a harbinger of trials and great calamities and, later, as a beneficial and calm current, suggesting peace and order, although with moments of tension represented by storms and the sudden drainage that causes the forest to resurface.

Seen in this way, the motive is a determining element of the narrative, as it is the basis of the events that lead the protagonists to undertake a journey that teaches them to put aside their differences and form a group in order to survive in an unpredictable nature, capable of causing death with its blind fury and favoring life as a source of food. In this sense, we can highlight the sequence in which the cat, who learned to swim after falling into the water several times, dives to provide food for himself and the other passengers on the boat, fishing for fish of different species, which he places on the deck and offers to his fellow passengers.

A transformative element of both nature and the inhabitants of the boat, who learn the need for cooperation, water plays another important role, highlighted by Valentine Guégan: it restores the earth to its original continuity, erasing territories and cultures and making it possible for different species from different parts of the globe to meet. If cats and dogs are present on all continents, capybaras come from South America and lemurs and secretary birds from Africa, forming a community that knows no borders or barriers.

Gints Zilbalodis adds a piece of information to this picture, stating that the choice of animals took into account the possibility of their interaction. It was important that they were different in terms of appearance and vocals, but they could not be antagonists, as they had to form a group.

Noah's Ark, where the animals have no partners, stands out not only for the coexistence of different species, but also for the absence of human beings, which leads one to imagine a post-apocalyptic scenario, the causes of which are unknown to the audience. At the beginning of the film, the cat's walk through the forest is dotted with human remains in the form of statues of felines of various sizes. Another clue is the abandoned cabin, which should be his home, into which he enters through a window to sleep on an unmade bed. In the house, which probably belonged to an artist, we see, on a table, a drawing of a cat and a small unfinished sculpture, which give the impression of a sudden and unexpected departure.

During the navigation, the cat and his companions come across glass objects carried by the lemur in a basket and the ancient and sumptuous buildings of a half-submerged city, which refer to a sophisticated but possibly extinct civilization. The text published in the podcast “The cultural aspect” recalls that domestic animals themselves can be considered human vestiges, forced to survive, like other species, in a nature that has returned to its original state. This idea is reinforced in the sequences in which the golden retriever plays with a glass ball and a kind of spinning top, and the cat, with a reflection of the sun emitted by the mirror held by the lemur, referring to games played in partnership with human beings.

It is significant that the main character is the cat, a shy and suspicious animal that initially rejects the friendship of the dog that had followed it, in vain, to the cabin. Welcomed by a calm capybara on the drifting boat, it gradually adapts to living with her and with the other animals that join the group throughout the journey. Thus begins a process of learning about otherness, which consists of trying to establish communication through behaviors and expressions, since each animal has its own phonic code.

A principle of solidarity, not without tensions, begins to emerge in the small community. The capybara, which had taught the cat to swim, picks up a banana peel with the strength of its incisors and places it in the boat. After falling into the water, the feline is saved from drowning by a whale. The capybara (which helps it gather glass objects in a basket) invites the lemur to climb aboard the boat. When they dock on the shore, the small group is caught by the dog. The secretary bird, which had acted as a predator in the episode of the whale rescue, offers the cat a fish and is harassed by its fellow members of the group; wounded in a duel, its wing is broken and joins the group.

Life on the boat is not always peaceful. The lemur argues with the bird when the latter kicks the glass ball the dog was playing with overboard. The sailboat runs aground in a tree, but is freed by the whale's leap. The cat becomes the provider with his ability to catch fish. The group takes in the other dogs from the pack that had chased the cat at the beginning of the film, despite the bird's disagreement. During a storm, the bird flies off the boat and reaches the shore. The cat, who had fallen into the water, swims to shore and finds the bird, who has regained the ability to fly. A vortex of multicolored light lifts the two animals, but the cat is soon returned to land.

Alone, he wanders through the forest until he finds the lemur who leads him to a cliff where the boat was parked on top of a tree. The cat tries to pull the sailboat out of the tree; the dogs manage to jump, but the capybara gets stuck. The joint effort is hampered when the dogs, except the golden retriever, go after a rabbit, but the capybara is saved before the tree falls on the cliff. Alone, the cat finds the whale dying after having been stranded in the forest by the sudden backflow of the waters and comforts it.

The capybara, the dog and the lemur join him; the four look at their own reflection in a puddle of water, forming a “group portrait”,^[1] which contrasts with the first image of the film, in which the cat is reflected alone in the water, and with others that appear throughout the film associated with individual contemplations in a mirror. In a post-credits sequence, the whale is seen emerging from the ocean, possibly to suggest the value of solidarity in reestablishing natural and community balance.

The transition from one to multiple represents the overcoming of the individualism of each animal involved in the adventure in favor of a collective made up of different beings, in which differences are attenuated by the need for community living. Except for the capybara, which does not undergo any changes throughout the narrative, remaining calm and helpful, the other animals are affected in their behavior by living together. The dog stops being needy and dependent and shows that he has learned the meaning of solidarity in the episode of the sailboat stranded in the tree.

The lemur becomes a less anxious animal, managing to abandon the “treasure” that it would not part with. The bird, after observing the small family from afar, seems to apologize to the cat following the fish, which determines its departure from the flock and its association with its new companions.

3.

In light of these elements, it is possible to endorse the reading proposed in the podcast “The cultural aspect”. Although the protagonists have animalistic behavior, they serve as support for a fable that goes beyond a purely animalistic message. “A form of social contract is created between them, with the notions of property, sharing, and interest”. Seen from this perspective, the world of Flow is not simply apocalyptic; it presupposes a genesis, by inviting us to think “about a political renewal, based on solidarity, which is not just the idea of ​​cohabitation between species, but a more radical idea, [situated] at the intersection between a reflection on the living and political philosophy”.

Zilbalodis, moreover, had revealed similar intentions to this analysis, when he stated: “I also didn’t want a post-apocalyptic narrative that was too dark: I wanted to show the positive aspects of nature […]. Above all, I wanted to find a balance between devastation, hope, humor, comedy and action, which would make the film truly captivating”, awakening people’s desire to watch it. In addition to its symbolic meaning, the theme of cooperation has a personal meaning for him, since, for the first time, he had a large team and an adequate budget: “I wanted to tell the story of my experience of working together with other people and trusting them. I thought the cat would be the perfect protagonist because he likes to do things his own way”.

Without didactic pretensions, the film covers several contemporary themes – climate crisis, overcoming differences, transforming selfishness into collaboration, adaptation, the value of friendship – in an invitation to review our positions in a scenario of global danger, privileging understanding and seeking balance in a universe full of conflicts and hatred for those who are different and divergent.

These themes led Valentine Guégan to detect in the film the presence of an anthropomorphism apparently denied by the realistic treatment of animals as animals. His analysis focuses on the violence of the flock of birds, closed in on the norms of their own clan, in contrast to the “model of civilization allegorized by the crew of the boat, as its occupants individualize themselves and accept their antagonisms.”

The personalization of the animals ultimately causes the film to fall “into the trap of anthropomorphism,” leading her to conclude that “These moments weaken the director’s effort to defamiliarize the way humans, and with them animated films, look at the animal kingdom.” Even if only partially, Flow shows that the effort to abandon the human model, “although dangerous, is within reach”.

There are, without a doubt, some anthropomorphic suggestions in the film; the most obvious is the handling of the sailboat's helm by all the animals at crucial moments. Another, symbolic in nature, is experienced by the cat, who encounters death on two occasions: when the secretary bird ascends in a vortex of light, which provides a mystical experience; and when the whale's raw agony confronts him, without mediation, with the finitude of life. In general terms, however, the film presents the protagonists in their animal condition through the precise capture of behaviors and vocalizations.

4.

Even though he is creating an animation that is different from the models of Disney Studios and Pixar, Gints Zilbalodis is not breaking new ground in this sense, as there are previous examples of films that were based on the realistic reproduction of animal behavior. This is the case of some Disney Studio productions from the 1930s and 1940s: Pinocchio (Pinocchio), released in 1940, in which the kitten Figaro is devoid of human characteristics; and, particularly, of Bambi (1942), in whose production one can notice a great realistic effort in reproducing the movements of animals.

In addition to attending a conference on the structure and movements of animals, given by the creator of the little deer design, Rico LeBrun, the animators visited the Los Angeles Zoo and had access to a mini zoo right on their workplace, where they could seek first-hand information.

The same realistic care was used in another studio production dated 1967, Mogli, the wolf boy (The jungle book). Drawings of elephants, anatomical comparison charts and documentaries about orangutans, footage of panthers, tigers and bears were used in the production of the animation to reinforce the sense of reality sought by the filmmakers, although the conception was anthropomorphic. Using the same elements, with almost imperceptible variations, visual artist David Claerbout created the animation The pure necessity (The Queen's Innocentness, 2016)^[2], in which he returned the animals from the 1967 film to their original condition, simply engaged in survival actions, without any anthropomorphic characterization.

The theme of cooperation, central to the plot of Flow, places it in a vein that has been widely explored in recent times, within which two lively productions from the same year stand out: the North American Mufasa: The Lion King and the Brazilian Noah's Ark. In both, the union of the weakest makes it possible to defeat the absolutist pretensions of a tyrant and his henchmen in favor of a more just and serene life.

Em Mufasa: The Lion King, which stands out for its exacerbated hyper-realism in the treatment of animals and the environment, the protagonist becomes sovereign of Milele thanks to the fight of all species against Kiros and his pride of white lions, famous for their ferocity and cruelty. In Noah's Ark, the mice Vini and Tom manage to convince the other animals sheltered in the ark to react against the arrogance of Baruk and his acolytes, who were sowing terror on the ship.

If in these two films, the problem of collaboration is at the service of topos of the fight between good and evil, in Flow the focus shifts to the issue of survival in the face of a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions, which requires new forms of association and collaboration. At this particular moment in human history, marked by countless ethnic conflicts, the clash of contrasting worldviews, the spread of extremist ideas (and, not infrequently, misinformation) through social media, and the rise to power of autocratic leaders, the issue of collaboration acquires a political significance that deserves to be highlighted.

The idea of ​​collaboration questions the extreme individualism advocated by neoliberalism in its daily campaign against the welfare state, undermining notions of community and putting the foundations of modern Western societies at risk.

Anthropologist Mirian Goldenberg proposed using the psychological concept of “flow” for the film, which designates “a mental state that occurs when we are performing an activity in which we are completely focused, when we lose track of time and our psychic energy is fully focused on what we are creating”, but it does not apply to the situation experienced by the characters, who are forced to react to the catastrophe and live with others in order to achieve salvation. The forced coexistence of different species gradually transforms into consensual cohabitation, as the small group realizes the need for joint action to ensure survival.

The cat's trajectory, naturally individualistic, is paradigmatic in this sense. In addition to the need to react to the hostile environment – ​​caused by a catastrophe that he and his companions do not understand and cannot fight against – is the need to adapt to coexistence with other species in the restricted space of the sailboat, forging an alliance that is not limited to simple survival. During the journey into the unknown, the cat learns to overcome its own limitations, to develop new skills that it puts at the service of the group, to adapt to a different reality, to adopt empathetic behavior in extreme situations, demonstrating that it has acquired feelings such as solidarity and even friendship.

Guillermo del Toro, who injected a political slant into his dark stopmotion Pinocchio by Guillermo del Toro (Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, 2022), was won by Flow and did not hesitate to declare: “If I could express a wish for the future of animation, these images would be a magnificent and haunting beginning.” If not prophetic, the Mexican director’s words fit within the scope of the recognition that the film has been garnering throughout 2024,^[3] culminating in the Oscar win on March 2, 2025.

A low-budget production – it cost 3 million euros – the film competed with two North American productions – Wild robot (The wild robott) and Inside Out 2 (Inside out 2), budgeted at $78 million and $200 million, respectively – and stopmotions from Great Britain (Wallace & Gromit: Revenge / Wallace & Gromit: revenge most fowl) and Australia (Memory of a snail / Memoirs of a Snail).

Apparently Gints Zilbalodis shares with Chris Sanders, director of Wild robot, admiration for Hayao Miyazaki, co-founder of the legendary Studio Ghibli, from whom he inherited his empathetic view of nature and his love for cats. Inserted, by force of circumstances, into a natural flow that escapes their understanding, the animals in the film experience an individual change that leads them to adjust their behavior to the new situation, becoming collaborative and leaving a lesson for the restless humanity of the 21st century: it is only by overcoming prejudices and accepting differences with serenity that it will be possible to build a more just and egalitarian society.

This message is transmitted through meows, barks, croaks, squeaks, moans, that is, through a myriad of phonetic codes, which cease to be an obstacle and become a possible and desirable form of communication.

* Annateresa Fabris is a retired professor at the Department of Visual Arts at ECA-USP. She is the author, among other books, of Reality and fiction in Latin American photography (UFRGS Publisher).

Reference

Flow

France/ Belgium/ Latvia, cartoon, 85 minutes.

Directed by: Gints Zilbalodis.

Screenplay: Gints Zilbalodis, Matis Kaza.

REFERENCES

ARFINI, Angelica. “Flow, the review: the cinema that makes its form più pure”, 4 Nov. 2024. Available using this link.

“Bambi”. Available at: .

BLAUVELT, Christian. “Watch the director of 'Flow' go behind the scenes of the animated movie of the year”. IndieWire, 4 Dec 2024. Available using this link.

CARNEIRO, Raquel. “Innovative cuteness”. Veja, Sao Paulo, n. 2932, February 21, 2025, p. 84-85.

CASELLA, Paola. “An excellent animated film adapted to everything. Un'universale ode alla solidarietà e alla cooperazione”, 23 Oct. 2024. Available using this link.

CHEVALIER, Jean: GHEERBRANT, Alain. symbol dictionary. Translation by Vera da Costa e Silva et al. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio, 1991.

FILM CLUB. “Critique-Flow”, February 20, 2025. Available using this link.

DE ANGELIS, Gianluca. “'Flow – A world of salvation', a delicate and surprising film”, 16 Nov. 2024. Available using this link.

DOUHAIRE-KERDONCUFF, Anne. “Trois raisons de se rouer pour voir 'Flow', le chat qui n'avait plus peur de l'eau”, 29 Oct. 2024. Available using this link.

FABRIS, Annateresa. “An anti-Disney Disney”. In: Prysthorn, Angela et al. (org.). Full text proceedings of the XXII Meeting of Socine. São Paulo: Socine, 2018, p. 157-158. Available using this link.

FLORES CORONA, Leslie A. “'Flow': the film that Guillermo del Toro considers the future of animation for this reason”, 2 Jan. 2025. Available using this link.

“Fumito Ueda”. Available using this link.

GOLDENBERG, Mirian. “'Flow' is excitement in the soul”. Folha de S. Paul, 5 Mar. 2025, p. B16.

GUÉGAN, Valentine. “Flow, le chat qui n'avait plus peur de l'eau”, sd Available at: <critikat.com/actualite-cine/critique/flow-le-chat-qui-navait-plus-peur-de-leau>.

NIOLA, Gabriele. “This is a new animation film made with video production techniques, and is extraordinary”, 24 Oct. 2024. Available using this link.

NUGENT, John. “Flow review”, March 3, 2025. Available using this link.

NEONEWS EDITORIAL. “Critique/Flow”, December 3, 2024. Available using this link.

LE REGARD CULTUREL. “'Flow': un chat, une barque, et pas mal de philo”, 30 Oct. 2024. Available using this link.

RENGIFO, Alci. “'Flow' filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis on his wonderfully immersive ecological fable about solidarity”. Entertainment Voice, Nov 22, 2024. Available using this link.

ROONEY, David. “Review of 'Flow,' a charming ecological fable about the community that turns 3D animation into artisanal magic.” Hollywood Reporter, May 24, 2024. Available using this link.

SANTIAGO, Luiz. “Critique/Flow (2024)”, February 19, 2024. Available using this link.

SHACHAT, Sarah. “'Flow' doesn't have a dialogue – But its sounds design speaks volumes”. IndieWire, Nov 29, 2024. Available using this link.

Notes

[1] I thank Mariarosaria Fabris for suggesting this image.

[2] The work was presented at the Pinacoteca do Estado (São Paulo) between November 25, 2017 and March 5, 2018.

[3] The film premiered at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival and won awards at the Annecy Animated Film Festival, the European Film Awards and the Golden Globes, among others.

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