Flow (2024)
Animation from outside the Hollywood and major European studio circuits has had something of a quiet renaissance over the past decade or so, with films like Josep and No Dogs or Italians Allowed demonstrating that hand-crafted, personal animation can carry real emotional weight without the backing of a nine-figure budget. Flow, the 2024 animated feature from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis, arrives very much in that spirit: a co-production spread across Latvia, Belgium, and France, assembled through a consortium of smaller outfits including Dream Well Studio, Sacrebleu Productions, and ARTE France Cinéma. It tells the story of a solitary cat caught in the aftermath of a catastrophic flood, who ends up sharing a drifting boat with an unlikely assortment of other animals. There is no human presence to speak of, and no conventional narrative scaffolding to lean on. What carries the film is atmosphere, movement, and the wordless relationships that form between its animal characters as the water rises around them. It is the kind of premise that sounds deceptively simple and is, in practice, rather difficult to pull off.
Zilbalodis is still a young filmmaker by any measure, but he already has form with ambitious, stripped-back animation. His debut feature Away (2019) was remarkable partly because he made it almost entirely by himself over four years, handling direction, animation, music, and editing as a one-man operation. Flow is a step up in scale, with a proper production team behind it this time, though it retains that handmade sensibility and Zilbalodis's characteristic reluctance to over-explain. The film ran on a modest budget by international animation standards, which is worth keeping in mind when considering the visual choices on screen. It won the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film and received an Academy Award nomination in the same category, arriving in British cinemas preceded by considerable critical enthusiasm. Whether that enthusiasm is entirely warranted is, of course, where a review becomes useful. The cast, in the traditional sense, does not apply here: the characters are animals rendered through animation, with no voice performances to speak of, so the film lives or dies entirely on its visual and musical storytelling.
What Flow does share with some of the stronger non-English language films that have passed through this blog, including Blizzard of Souls, is a willingness to trust the audience without constantly holding their hand. There is no dialogue, no narration, and no character names spelled out in a prologue. You are simply placed into this waterlogged world and expected to orient yourself. For a family film, that is a genuinely brave choice, and one that has clearly resonated with audiences looking for something a little different from the animation mainstream. Whether the execution matches the ambition is the question Macca addresses below.
Flow directed by Gints Zilbalodis, came to me with a massive amount of hype, so I went in with fairly high expectations. I must admit, I was a bit gobsmacked right out of the gate to find out there’s absolutely no dialogue in the entire film. We’ve seen this trick pulled off before, of course (think of the brilliant first act of Pixar’s Wall-E) but stretching it across a full feature is a bold choice. Credit where it’s due, though: Zilbalodis manages to make it work for the most part. The story is genuinely interesting, and he does a cracking job of building tension. The perilous scenes play out really well, proving you don’t necessarily need characters chatting away to keep an audience engaged.
But then we get to the visuals, which have been much lauded by critics, and this is where I have to part ways with the consensus. To be completely honest, I was somewhat disappointed, purely because there are dozens and dozens of better-looking animated films out there today. The graphics actually looked a bit worse than what you’d expect from a standard video game these days. Because of that, it honestly felt like I was just watching a 90-minute continuous cutscene from a game like Stray. And the irony there is that Stray is also about a single, lone cat navigating a world without dialogue, but it actually boasts far superior, more immersive visuals.
It certainly wasn’t a "bad" film by any stretch of the imagination. It’s a solid, engaging piece of work that proves Zilbalodis has a real knack for pacing and non-verbal storytelling. But when a film is being touted as a visual masterpiece, falling short in that specific department is a big miss for me. It just wasn’t anywhere near as good as I expected it to be based on the rave reviews.
Flow is a decent, dialogue-free adventure that does the job and keeps you watching, but it's a long way from the groundbreaking spectacle people are making it out to be. If you’re going in expecting a visual triumph, you might find yourself a bit underwhelmed.
Flow sits in an interesting position: admired widely enough to collect major awards, but polished but unremarkable in ways that its most fervent champions have perhaps glossed over. There is real craft in the pacing and the emotional economy of the storytelling, and Zilbalodis clearly has a distinctive sensibility worth following. For viewers coming to it with measured expectations, it is a thoughtful, quietly engaging 85 minutes. For those arriving on the back of considerable hype, the gap between reputation and reality may be the thing that lingers longest. Sometimes the best thing a film can do is start a conversation, even if that conversation turns out to be a mild disagreement with the critics.
Rating: ★★★ | Year: 2024 | Watched: 2026-06-10
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for Flow (2024) on YouTube
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: MUBI · MUBI Amazon Channel
Rent: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Curzon Home Cinema
Buy: Apple TV Store · Rakuten TV · Amazon Video · Sky Store
Physical: Amazon UK · Zavvi
Watch in the US
Stream: HBO Max Amazon Channel · HBO Max
Rent: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Buy: Amazon Video · Apple TV Store · Google Play Movies · YouTube
Physical: Amazon US
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