Flow (Straume) Movie Review (Spoiler Free)

An animated movie focusing on animals, without voice actors & having been completely conceived on an open-source software. Sounds like a misfire, right? Well, it isn’t! 

Original Title: Straume

Genre: Adventure / Animation / Fantasy

Director: Gints Zilbalodis

Animals: Cat, Dog, Capybara, Lemur, Secretarybird & Whale.

Run Time: 85 min.

US Release: 06 December 2024 (limited)

UK Release: 21 March 2025

German Release: 06 March 2025

Here is the honest truth: I had seen posters for this movie swirling around last year, believing it to be a game. As such, I didn’t pay much attention to Zilbalodis’ animated feature until it started earning a wave of awards, then I decided to look it up. Without a date set up for a cinematic release here in Germany, it quickly faded out of my mind until the Academy Awards early this year. I looked it up again, finding out that it was created entirely via an open-source platform called Blender, further capturing my attention, as something like this is unheard of.

So, let me explain to you why this animation is such a groundbreaker, as we purr through my review for Flow. 

This Latvian, French and Belgian collaboration features a cat as its protagonist, in this no-dialogue adventurous tale. As the furry felines' home is devastated by an apocalyptic event, the solitary animal finds refuge on a boat inhabited by several other species. The animals will need to learn to work together to survive, despite their differences. 

Flow was derived from the Latvian writer/director Gints Zilbalodis’ previous short film Aqua, in which a cat needed to overcome her fear of the ocean. From there, the moviemaker expanded his story, using only limited sources, finalising his work five-and-a-half years later. Inspiration for the film, among others, was French mime Jacques Tati, who gave Zilbalodis the idea for the absence of dialogue, as well as the Japanese post-apocalyptic anime Future Boy Conan, which was a major driving force for the setting of the world.

Contrary to the more traditional use of storyboards, the plot was derived by using animatics, allowing the team to conceive the story flexibly. As the project progressed through production, the team around the regisseur grew larger. Production companies Take Five plus Sacreblue joined in 2022, who worked on animation and sound. 

Work on the project spanned from 2019 to mid-2024, receiving financial support from the National Film Centre of Latvia, just like other organisations. Material of the flick was presented at the 2022 Cartoon Movie forum in Bordeaux, to present the progress. 

While the absence of spoken words is not an innovative idea in film, it does highlight that animation can be engaging using merely visuals. It allows the movie to reach a broader audience emotionally.

Cinematographically, this feature uses a consistently moving picture, keeping the narrative in motion, by blending traditional techniques of animation with typical video-game camera cinematics. This creates a super immersive experience, with an surrealist ethereal atmosphere, unseen in motion pictures as of yet. The colour palette is bright and striking, paired with lively lighting that creates an emotionally engaging visual style. Warmer colours were used for more energetic segments, while cooler tones represented quieter, melancholic moments. 

Unorthodox is the use of the open-source tool Blender to completely create this animated feature. It uses a mix of retro cel-shade style for its living creatures, set in a background setting with uber-realistic-looking fauna. The graphics used for the natural flow of water are breathtaking. Unfortunately, it is the main characters that look, at times, dated, as if a little rough around the edges. This hinders, at times, a full immersion into the narrative.  

The sound effects prioritised realism over synthetically produced audio. As such, real animal recordings were used for the creature protagonists. With the exception of the Capibara, whose high-pitch natural squeak did not match with the calm personality displayed on screen, all other recordings are taken from their real animal counterparts.

The musical score was a collaborative approach by the director himself plus Rihards Zaļupe. The score is sombre, balancing well with the story displayed on screen. 

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Verdict: Gints Zilbalodis’ award-winning animated movie is a groundbreaking achievement that will revolutionise the animation field. For one, the picture was made with limited resources, utilising the open-source software Blender, using its real-time renderer EEVEE. The movements, as well as the behaviour of animals, were studied in Zoos to mimic them authentically on film. The plot makes use of pure visual storytelling, without the use of dialogue, thus enhancing its emotional reach to a global audience. Most impressive is the cinematography that blends the kinematics of video-game movements with traditional filmmaking approaches, creating something new and unseen as of today. The effects created through Blender look impressive, mixing again realistic computer imagery of the world, with retro cel-shade animal characters. Unfortunately, the creatures look a little too dated for the world, disrupting the immersion. Apart from that, Flow is an impressive addition to the world of animation, deserving of an 8.5  out of 10. 

Have you seen Flow? If not, I truly recommend seeing this on a big screen, as long as it's playing in theatres. Did you like it? Do you agree with my review? Like, share & comment below. As always, thank you for reading!