What is Flow, the animated indie movie that beat Disney to the Golden Globe?

One of the biggest surprises of this year's Golden Globes came in the Best Animated Feature category. Rather than an enormous Disney hit, the award went to Flow — a dialogue-free, independent animation from Latvia.

Flow's win is all the more impressive because it's not as if this was a particularly lean year for animation at the Globes. The category contained two mammoth Disney movies in the shape of Pixar sequel Inside Out 2 — the highest-grossing film of 2024 — and song-and-dance sequel Moana 2, which is closing in on the billion-dollar mark worldwide.

Even away from Disney, the category also included emotionally potent DreamWorks hit The Wild Robot, the triumphant return of Wallace and Gromit for Vengeance Most Fowl, and the dark stop-motion story Memoir of a Snail. So how did Flow rise to the top?

What is Flow?

Directed and co-written by Gints Zilbalodis, Flow is an inventive and emotional adventure story about a cat trying to survive when its home is ravaged by a near-biblical flood. The cat jumps on a sailboat for safety and, over the course of the film, is joined by various other animals. Just like its fellow nominee The Wild Robot, it's a fantastical story with a resonant eco-parable undertone to it.

These aren't anthropomorphised, talking Disney animals. They only communicate via animal noises — in most cases provided by the real animals depicted. The exception is the capybara character, whose noises are actually provided by a baby camel.

Read more: Flow Is the Perfect Movie for Animation Fans, Animal Lovers, and Environmental Doomsayers (Rolling Stone, 5 min read)

The movie, which was made without major studio backing and rendered using the open source graphics program Blender, has been embraced by critics. It could even end up competing on multiple fronts at the Oscars, as it's Latvia's official entry for the Best International Feature category. It's the first time the country's entry has made the 15-film shortlist.

Why did Flow win at the Golden Globes?

Flow stands out as something truly unique in a category that, far too often, rewards very similar films each year. There is a sense, though, that the tide is turning a little. The last two winners at both the Oscars and the Globes were Studio Ghibli's The Boy and the Heron and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio — Netflix's innovative stop-motion take on the classic story. The days of Disney domination may well be over.

Read more: How Flow, a Latvian Animated Movie with No Dialogue, Is Upending the Awards Race (People, 3 min read)

The simplicity of the storytelling also helps. Without any dialogue to translate, any prejudice against "foreign" films disappears immediately. What's left is a universal survival tale, assisted by some very handsome animation in a visual style that looks nothing like the smooth, computer-generated sheen often relied upon by the major studios.

Flow could also have been the beneficiary of a year in which a selection of equally strong studio movies split each other's votes. Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot — and some would argue Moana 2 — are impressive blockbuster animation achievements, which may have opened the door for Flow to come through as the scrappy underdog.

Where can I watch Flow?

There's some bad news for British film fans here. Flow hasn't yet been released in this country and it's not due to arrive until 21 March, when it's getting a cinema release courtesy of Curzon. It's only likely to play in a very limited number of cinemas, but will be available to stream shortly after via the Curzon Home Cinema platform.

Read more: The Budget for Animated Hit ‘Flow’ Was So Tight, the Film Has No Deleted Scenes (IndieWire, 3 min read)

Over in the US, the film got a cinema release in November 2024 and broke distributor Janus Films' box office record, earning $2.6m (£2.1m). There's no sign of a streaming release just yet but, with the Golden Globes success in its back pocket, its cinema run will almost certainly expand.

Flow is in UK cinemas from 21 March.