I’m going to need someone to do me a favor: Go watch Flow, the new film from directos Gints Zilbalodis, and tell me if all the perfect, wonderful creatures in it are okay at the end. I’m serious: As the human to a small black cat with a very big personality, I cannot watch this without knowing this adorable big-eyed feline is going to be safe and warm and well-fed at the end. I wept at the trailer.
Director Zilbalodis, who co-wrote Flow with Matiss Kaza, also made 2019’s Away, which was similarly animated and wordless. Flow has been racking up film festival awards, including four prizes at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival, ahead of its release in the U.S. Here’s the synopsis:
A wondrous journey, through realms natural and mystical, Flow follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. From the boundless imagination of the award-winning Gints Zilbalodis (Away) comes a thrilling animated spectacle as well as a profound meditation on the fragility of the environment and the spirit of friendship and community. Steeped in the soaring possibilities of visual storytelling, Flow is a feast for the senses and a treasure for the heart.
A cat! A capybara! A lemur! A bird! And a dog! It’s like this movie was built in a lab specifically to tug at my heartstrings. And there’s a breathtaking whale, and a lot of other creatures. Fish get eaten, though. Sorry, fish. A cat’s gotta eat.
IndieWire said of Flow, “A movie brimming with sentiment but not sentimentality, this is one of the most moving animated films in recent memory, and, beyond that, groundbreaking too.” And no less an expert than Guillermo del Toro said on Twitter, “If I could wish for the future of animation, these images would be its magnificent, breathtaking start.”
Flow arrives in theaters November 22nd. I think you’re going to want to bring tissues for this.
