Flow: a cat, a boat and learning to trust
Gints Zilbalodis’s adventure brings animals together after a flood. Behind the journey is a director who moved from doing everything alone to working with a team.
Water changes the rules
A cat needs shelter after a great flood. In Flow, that shelter is a small boat shared with other animals. The premise presents a readily understood problem: reaching safety is insufficient if you then have to live with strangers. Its initial appeal lies in that unexpected dependence, which makes something as everyday as finding your place alongside others important.[2]
An adventure without words
Unifrance lists a 2024 animated film without words, running 75 minutes. That format invites attention to relationships between animals without expecting someone to translate every intention into dialogue. To approach the story, consider one question: what changes when sharing space stops being a choice? That is a way to read its starting point without revealing the ending.[1]
The director also had to change
In his 2024 Cannes interview, Zilbalodis compares the cat with his own experience: after making Away alone, Flow required teamwork. The director makes that connection between story and production. For someone familiar with his earlier film, that context opens a specific comparison: what it means to move from handling a journey yourself to depending on someone else.[2]
Build the world before drawing the route
The director tells Cannes that he placed characters in 3D environments instead of starting with a traditional storyboard, exploring camera movement that way. A storyboard is the sequence of drawings commonly used to plan a scene; here, the starting point was digital space. That difference helps explain how animation also involves choosing where we look at characters from.[2]
Blender and European collaboration
In Blender’s published interview, Zilbalodis explains that he used the software and its EEVEE renderer. He also dates the involvement of Belgium’s Take Five and France’s Sacrebleu Productions to 2022. Unifrance confirms the coproduction with Latvia. Those details offer another angle on Flow: a story about sharing a boat built by dividing work between teams.[3]
Sources and checks · 3
Links point to sources. They are not endorsements or sponsorships.
- [1] Unifrance · ficha de Flowofficial · Checked on 13 October 2026
- [2] Cannes · entrevista a Gints Zilbalodis,2024direct_interview · Checked on 13 October 2026
- [3] Blender · entrevista sobre la producción de Flowdirect_interview · Checked on 13 October 2026
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