Animation / Flow (2024)

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Flow (Latvian: Straume) is a Latvian-French-Belgian computer-animated feature film directed by Gints Zilbalodis (who also directed Away (2019)) and written by Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža.

In a world where humans seem to have vanished, a cat wanders through a forest and is taken by surprise by a flash flood. The cat seeks shelter on a small sailboat alongside an assortment of other animals, including a capybara, a ring-tailed lemur, a secretary bird, and a Labrador retriever. As the menagerie learns to cooperate to survive, they become unlikely friends.

The film is notable for being almost entirely animated in Blender.

Flow contains examples of:

• After the End: There are no human characters in this film, but several ruins suggest that they existed in this universe, and have disappeared. (They vanished so suddenly that the cat's human left an unfinished wood carving on their workbench, design sketches and wood shavings still scattered about.)
• All Dogs Are Purebred: All the dogs are generally recognizable, or specified in the script, as some breed. The main one is a yellow Labrador Retriever, and the other dogs include a black Chow Chow, a red Shiba Inu, a golden German Shepherd, and a black Xoloitzcuintli.
• All There in the Script: The genders of the characters are not mentioned due to the movie having no dialogue, but they are brought up in the script. The retriever is the only female of the main cast, and the "whale" is genderless.
• Ambiguous Ending: The Stinger shows that the "whale" is swimming in the ocean again. Was this a flashback to the time when the flood was happening, did the flood happen again after the movie and we're seeing it swimming in the ocean, or did it Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence like the bird and we're seeing it at peace after passing away?
• Animals Not to Scale: The secretary birds are huge in comparison to the other animals. The Labrador comes up to about the main one's ankles (which is even shown to relatively small compared to others of its flock), but in reality a secretary bird is only about a foot taller than a regular Labrador dog.
• Animal Stampede: The cat narrowly avoids being trampled by a herd of deer frantically running from the approaching tidal wave.
• Artistic License – Biology:
  • The animals don't shake off water much. The cat barely grooms.
  • The dog is a Labrador retriever, a breed that swims strongly, even having webbed toes and a waterproof coat, and loves the water. This one is far less aquatic than the cat.
• Artistic License – Ornithology: The secretary birds are shown living in flocks. In real life, they usually live alone or in mated pairs in adulthood, with larger aggregations only forming around abundant localized food or water resources — which doesn't seem to be the case at all for the secretary birds in the film. Also, the entire population has only white feathers, but in reality secretary birds are mostly grey and black (unless we assume the entire population was leucistic). One more detail: because secretary birds use their feet to kick prey to death, they have very short, sturdy toes that can't be used for grasping. These birds have full-on Handy Feet, with one shot of the bird's foot having it flex its toes like impatient fingers tapping.
• Artistic License – Ships: The boat goes through several periods of heavy rainfall yet never collects any water. This is obviously because the animals wouldn't be able to remove it with buckets like human sailors and would spend most of the film splashing around in stagnant water.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Implied when the secretary bird floats up toward a light in the sky, possibly ending the flood.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: The capybara jumps off the boat to recover the lemur’s glass ball that the secretary bird kicked out in the water. But as soon as “the whale” breaches on the surface, the capybara just nopes and swims back to the boat as fast as it can.
• Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny!: As the group tries to rescue the capybara from the boat, which got stranded over a crevasse after the flood subsided, a hare runs by and the dogs drop what they are doing and chase after it. Only the Labrador stays behind out of loyalty to its friends.
• Bad Vibrations: Early on, the puddle of water that the cat gazes into begins to ripple, subtly hinting at the impending Animal Stampede.
• Bait-and-Switch: As the floodwaters steadily rise towards the top of the gigantic cat statue, a huge Sea Monster breaches the surface of the water nearby. Its appearance suggests that fearsome predators lurk in these waters. Later, when the cat is trapped in an underwater eddy and on the verge of drowning, the same behemoth appears from the shadows. But rather than swallowing the cat whole, it gently lifts the cat up to the surface, saving its life.
• Bittersweet Ending: The group have become True Companions and survive all the dangers of the flood but The Secretary Bird is gone and the film ends with the group encountering a beached and dying whale, having been landlocked by the receding floodwaters, and the group can only give it comfort in its final moments. The Stinger shows the whale swimming freely and happily in the waters once more but what this actually means is anyone's guess.
• Blind Alley: Early in the film, the cat cleverly evades the dogs by hiding in an unexpected spot off the main escape route, causing the dogs to chase past it.
• Body Language: All the animals have very expressive body language, especially the cat and dog.
• Bookends: The movie begins with the cat looking at its solitary reflection in the water puddle and ends with the cat and his journey companions (a capybara, a retriever, and a ring-tailed lemur) looking at their reflection together on the water puddle left by the flood.
  • The film begins with the cat seeing a boat stuck in a tree. At the end, the boat that the animals use through the movie also ends up stuck in a tree.
• Broken Angel: The flock leader breaks the secretary bird's wing for opposing him, heavily impairing his ability to fly.
• Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The gigantic aquatic creature with tentacles on its belly, gills and spines on its back is referred to as a 'whale' in the script.
• Character-Magnetic Team: As the journey progresses, the cat's team grows larger with more animals joining its quest on the boat.
• Chekhov's Gun: The blue fishing buoy, a cherished keepsake of the lemur, is carelessly tossed overboard by the secretary bird in the sunken city. This seemingly trivial act becomes significant when the buoy reemerges to rescue the exhausted cat from drowning during the storm at the story's climax, illustrating the power of seemingly small details to have major consequences.
• Conflict Ball: The secretary bird punts a blue glass float out of the boat with very little provocation, thus antagonizing the golden retriever (who was using it to play "fetch") and the lemur (who considered it one of his precious treasures.) During the ensuing conflict, the mast of their boat becomes entangled in a tree.
• Corporal Punishment: After daring to defend the cat from the leader of the flock, the main secretary bird is punished by being beaten up by the leader and has its wing stomped on after the fight to keep it from being able to fly, effectively exiling it.
• Crush the Keepsake: When the new group of dogs accidentally break the lemur's beloved mirror, it serves to portray them as dumbasses less useful than the dog who's been with the crew the entire time.
• Deus ex Machina:
  • As the cat starts drowning while evading the attacking secretary birds, an enormous whale bursts forth from the depths, nudging the cat back to the surface and providing a miraculous survival.
  • As the cat clings weakly to a blue glass float, it looks as though he may soon lose the last of his strength and slip beneath the surface of the water. Suddenly, the floodwaters abruptly and rapidly recede, putting the cat safely onto solid ground.
• Disney Death: The post-credits stinger suggests that the whale, previously thought to be on the brink of death, has not only survived but is now joyfully splashing in the waves, bringing a sense of hope and renewal. Possibly.
• The Exile: The main secretary bird is essentially exiled by his flock for having dared to stand up to the leader. This is accomplished by the leader breaking one of his wings before the whole flock takes off, rendering him unable to follow.
• Female Feline, Male Mutt: Inverted with the cat and the retriever, the latter being the only girl in the main cast.
• Foreboding Fleeing Flock: The impending tidal wave is foreshadowed by a flock of screeching secretary birds in the sky, a stampeding herd of deer fleeing in panic, and the pack of dogs that was just chasing the cat immediately running past it without a second glance.
• Foreshadowing: Early on, when the cat goes down to a stream to catch a fish, a wooden boat can be seen nestled high in the boughs of a tree. This unusual sight suggests that the area has been flooded before. Judging by the condition of the boat, it happened fairly recently, too.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: The lemur spends the entire movie collecting trinkets, his fellow lemurs seemingly dismissing him for not having a large or impressive enough collection. After the floodwaters recede, the lemur has seemingly won the admiration he was seeking, with all the other lemurs crowding around and admiring themselves in the mirror the lemur collected from the boat. The Cat arrives and begs The lemur to follow, giving the latter two options: either stay and marinate in the admiration of his kin or follow The Cat into further danger. Naturally, The lemur chooses to follow The Cat.
• Giant Wall of Watery Doom: For the first minutes of the film, the cat wanders in the forest, unaware that it will be flooded. Then it sees many animals fleeing something, and that something is a threatening few-meter-high wave coming in its direction.
• The Great Flood: Water keeps rising for most of the film, covering everything except for the highest mountains.
• The Hero's Journey: For the feline protagonist where he has to face trials and tribulations during the journey to the giant stone pillars with his companions. It loosely fits with Joseph Campbell's model.
• Hero of Another Story: The boat of animals briefly passes by another boat of animals, although their boat only has lemurs.
• Incorrect Animal Noise: Animal noises were recorded from real animals. However, capybaras wouldn't produce enough sounds, and young camels were recorded instead.
• In the Style of: Alfonso Cuarón's movies. Director Gints Zilbalodis has stated that he was more influenced from live-action movies than animated movies (though he has also said that Hayao Miyazaki's Future Boy Conan as an inspiration for the film's flooded world setting) and cited Cuarón's road-trip movies like Y tu mamá también and Children of Men as its primary influences, as seen with its documentary-like, cinéma vérité style handheld camerawork. The movie also has plenty of long continuous shots much like Cuarón's Gravity, which also has a premise of the protagonist trying to reach one destination after facing a natural disaster.
• Karma Houdini: The secretary bird flock get away scot-free after breaking the wing of the one that defended the cat and are never seen for the rest of the film.
• Kidnapping Bird of Prey: When the cat falls into the water and loses sight of the boat, a secretary bird swoops down to pick it up and drops it mid-air after the cat starts struggling, inadvertently ensuring it lands back on the boat.
• Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: The exact nature of the flood in the film isn't made clear. While it's not impossible for it to be a mundane, if terrifying, natural occurence, as floodwaters really can rise and recede that quickly in Real Life, the semi-spiritual nature of the film combined with the other otherwordly elements such as the absence of humans, the whale and the secretary bird's ascension suggest it could be something more biblical.
• Minimalism: No spoken dialogue. Plenty of uninterrupted tracking shots with a few cuts. All visuals. The animal protagonists have only one goal: to survive the flood and reach the stone pillars.
• Misplaced Wildlife: An exact location of the film isn't given, but it appears to take place around a temperate forest environment, yet capybaras (endemic to the Latin American tropics), ring-tailed lemurs (found naturally only in Madagascar), and secretary birds (native only to sub-Saharan Africa) are present there, and the latter two at least seem to have well-established populations. Possibly justified, as given the film's implied After the End setting, it is very possible they represent animals that escaped from zoological institutions.
• Nameless Narrative: No character is named. This is an obvious consequence of no word being ever said or written. Even the screenplay only refers to the characters by their species or (for the dogs) their breed.
• No Antagonist: While there are various obstacles and jerks encountered along the way, there is no single overarching villain in the story. Instead, the primary antagonist is the relentless and impersonal force of the flood.
• No Cartoon Fish: Downplayed. All the animals, although drawn realistically, are very slightly given recognizably human-like body language and elevated intelligence. The exception is the fish, which helps them act as the food for the meat-eating animals, like the cat and the dogs, that can't just eat fruit and grass to survive.
• Noisy Nature: All the animals are pretty vocal, but especially the capybara, which are nearly silent in real life (and what sounds they do make tend to be very quiet). Word of God states how their attempts to record capybara calls for the movie failed because they barely made any sounds, so they had to resort to using camel vocalizations instead.
• Noodle Incident: Something happened that caused the Labrador to be separated from her pack the second time around, and we don't see the rest of her pack until later in the film.
• No Name Given: None of the animals have names, even in the script, and are only referred to by their species (or in the case of the dogs, by breed).
• The Oner: Some shots track an animal character's action with little cuttings.
  • Perhaps the longest one has to be a sequence where the cat goes overboard while trying to avoid a flock of white secretary birds, but it begins to sink underwater. The "whale" saves it from drowning, and the secretary bird grabs the cat before it frees itself and lands back on the boat.
  • Another long shot is where the animals see the other dogs stranded in a bell tower, but the secretary bird refuses to head for the dogs, and upon the cat giving its approval, the secretary bird lets the capybara take control of the boat and let the dogs come on board.
• Painted CGI: The graphic textures look like they are painted with oil paints and acrylics.
• Rescue Introduction: The friendly secretary bird earns its place on the team after bravely defending the cat against its own flock, ultimately getting shunned for its actions.
• Riddle for the Ages: Since there's no dialogue, or narration, or any other words at all, and the characters are just normal animals trying to survive, the circumstances of the setting are left entirely to the viewer's interpretation. Why the world is flooding, where the story is set, what's the whale-like creature, what happened to all the humans, and other such questions raised can only be guessed, as the story gives little to no clues.
• Scenery Porn: The natural landscape shots are eye candy and the sunken city is gorgeous to look at as well.
• Show, Don't Tell: There is no talking at all in this film, and no text either, therefore the audience has to infer everything from what they see.
• Silence Is Golden: None of the animals talk, and whatever they say through meowing or barking etc is left to the audience's interpretation. Unlike many silent films, there is nothing to be read besides the title and credits.
• Sliding Scale of Animal Cast: Category 1. All the characters are non-anthropomorphic animals, averting many tropes involving Funny Animals, and the Sliding Scale of Animal Communication is at level 0: these animals can't talk.
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: How did the flood happen? Why are there no humans? Why did the giant cat statues get built? What exactly is the weird whale-like creature? None of it is explained, as it isn't relevant to the plot.
• The Stinger: A post-credits scene reveals, what appears to be, the previously stranded and suffocating whale being alive and well, swimming freely in the ocean.
• Team Spirit: In a heartwarming climactic moment, the entire team bands together, showcasing their unique skills to rescue the capybara Just in Time from falling into an abyss, reinforcing their bonds of friendship.
• Terrifying Rescuer: The cat initially panics when it gets grabbed and flown off by one of the seemingly antagonistic secretary birds. Unbeknownst to the cat, the bird is actually helping it get back onto the boat. The same applies to the "whale", a fearsome, alien-looking leviathan that looks like it's about to swallow the cat while it's drowning, only to lift it up to the surface instead.
• Tracking Shot: A considerable portion of the footage is nothing but long tracking shots of the flooding waters, the scenery, or the characters, with little dialogue and even fewer cuts. In the flood's case, the camera moves very fluidly, as well, as if it were the water and not just a tool to record it.
• Try and Follow: During the early chase scene, the cat gains a significant lead on the pursuing dogs by slipping under a fallen tree that blocks their path, delaying the dogs long enough for the cat to find a hiding spot in a Blind Alley.
• Unknown Character: The person that was presumably the cat's owner. Whoever they were really loved their cat, given that the cat's house is surrounded by numerous statues of varying sizes. Their disappearance was so abrupt that they left an unfinished cat figurine mid-carving.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The world the animals are inhabiting looks like a mish-mash between Central Europe, Madagascar, South America, and Southeast Asia.
• World of Symbolism: The sunken city, the giant cat statues, the whale-like mutant fish living deep in the ocean, the glass ball, reflections, the sky portal to heaven, and among others are all meaningful in the cat's journey. As a visual-heavy, wordless experience, it's up to the viewers to decipher what they meant.
• You Leave Him Alone!: The friendly secretary bird protects the cat when the flock leader approaches with harmful intent. A fight ensues between the two birds, and although the friendly bird is defeated, it creates enough commotion to make the secretary birds leave the cat alone. Following this, the friendly bird joins the cat's team.