While the results of the recent Oscars may have seemed strange or unexpected to some, the ceremony highlighted one important trend — a film doesn’t need a multimillion-dollar budget to be considered the best of the best.
This was proven by the animated feature Flow from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis, which not only won the top prize in its category at the Oscars, but also won over audiences around the world — and even their pets.
A story about a lost black cat that captivated even its own kind
At the heart of Flow is a lonely black cat who survives a global flood and is now forced to find food and shelter without the help of the vanished human race. Along the way, the cat is joined by a few other animals — a capybara, a lemur, and a labrador — who work together to survive the unfolding apocalypse.
The key feature of Flow is that the film contains not a single spoken line; the visuals are accompanied only by the sounds of nature and the voices of animals and birds. It seems this is exactly what caught the attention of real-life pets watching the film at home with their owners — shortly after the Oscars, social media was flooded with adorable videos of fluffy companions intently following the events on screen.
Flow — a 'free' film that took the Oscar from major studios
Flow’s win at this year’s Oscars was a true triumph, proving that great art doesn’t require massive financial investment. Zilbalodis began work on the film back in 2019, creating the animation using a free 3D program called Blender. The production also notably skipped traditional storyboarding and scene-count editing.
