A short film review by Madhuri
We went to see the film Flow. This is a French-Latvian collaboration, animated and without any words, but lots of music.
It was exceptional, unique, incredibly moving and strange.
It features a cat – definitely the best animated cat ever, so incredibly real – and a cast of animal characters. They don’t speak and they don’t do human things, they just be their animal selves, but once in a long while they do something altruistic or tool-using. They make their proper animal sounds.
There are dogs, lemurs, a capybara, stork-chicken things, a sea monster… and oh, what a world they are in: human relics from recent habitation, but humans are fully absent.
Water rises, boats float past empty or animal-inhabited, strange thick carven ruins stick up, reindeer thunder past, and the animals do quite peaceable animal things as they somehow survive.
Transcendent moments, cataclysmic moments… and a mood of ineffable pragmatic poignancy.
We walked out all heart-bulgy and amazed.
Flow
(Latvian: Straume)
2024 Animation 1hr 24m
Directed by Gints Zilbalodis
Written by Gints Zilbalodis, Matīss Kaža
Produced by Matīss Kaža, Gints Zilbalodis, Ron Dyens, Gregory Zalcman
The film earned accolades including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and an Annie Award, with nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, making Gints Zilbalodis and co-producer Matīss Kaža the first Latvians to win an Academy Award.
flowthemovie.com – imdb.com – wikipedia.org
Comments are closed.