FlowA wordless pair of cats that was the first Latvian film to win an Oscar price led to a sleepless night for the numerous Latvians who celebrated the historical award.
The film won the Oscar for animated features at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday in Los Angeles, which was broadcast on Monday at 2 a.m. to watch out of their houses. Made with open source software and a budget of less than $ 4 million, US Flow NAB achieved the main prize in a surprise about big budget films such as Dreamworks animations’. The wild robotand Disney and Pixars box office Smash, Inside out 2.
After filmmaker Gint’s Zilbalodis recognized the significant nature of his victory.
“I am really moved by the warm reception that our film had. I hope this will open doors for independent animated filmmakers around the world,” Zilbalodis told Los Angeles. “This is the first time that a film from Latvia has been nominated. So it really means a lot to us.”
The film-as “Straume” in Lettian for the use of Blender, a free open source animation software, which can be carried out on most laptops, praised to create the feature film. The result is a dreamy aesthetics, coupled with a peaceful but post-apocalyptic fable over a black cat, a dog, a capybara, a ring tail lemur and a secretary who try to survive a catastrophic flood.
The film has no dialogue that uses its graphics and music alone to bring the viewers into the unlikely relationship and the understanding between the species that try to escape the rising water.
“I think you can express a lot more without words. I could not articulate some of these emotions and ideas with words, but I can say a lot more with music, sound, movement and processing,” said Zilbalodis behind the stage. “These are my favorite species of films and favorite scenes and are very cinematic and transcendant cultural limits.”
“Great and historical day for Latvia”
The Oscar statuette is the latest source for the pride of the hometown for the Baltic Land of almost 1.9 million people who have taken on Flow In droves since the world premiere at the Film Festival in the Cannes in May 2024. The National Film Center of Latvia, one of the supporters of the film, called the film “An unprecedented phenomenon in the history of Latvian cinema”.
More than 320,000 people have seen it in the cinemas in Latvia, an audience that, according to the center, has been greater in the past 30 years than any other film in the country. And more than 15,000 people over 10 days visited the Latvian National Museum of Art to publicly see the Golden Globe Award of the film – also Latvia’s first – in January.
In order to honor the film, Latvia released a special stamp that reminded days before the Oscars ceremony.
In the middle of the capital FlowThe central black cat dealt with the “A” to secure Latvians and tourists alike – including Latvian President Edgar Rinkēvičs, who took a photo with the famous cat on Monday.
“This is a great and historical day for Latvia!” Rinkēvičs wrote in a post about X to celebrate the victory. “And we will all need to understand what happened because something big and beautiful happened!”
Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, in her congratulations on X to the filmmakers, added: “The cat continues to catch the hearts of people worldwide!”
Flow Is only Zilbalodis’ second animated film as a director. He was the only animator in his first feature film, 2019’s, Away.
The victory Sunday contributes to an already impressive curriculum vitae for the director, which includes a best animation feature at the Golden Globe Awards, the main prize at the Ottawa International Animation Festival as well as nominations by Critics Choice Awards, Annie Awards and British Academy Film Awards.
The success of the film is shared with the producers Matīs Kaža, Ron Dyens and Gregory Zalcman. Latvian, French and Belgian co-production was also nominated for the best international feature film at the Oscar awards, but lost to Brazil I’m still here.
The team celebrated their style victory after the ceremony. In an Instagram contribution, Zilbalodi’s photos of itself shared in an in-n-out that was still adorned in his suit, a burger in his hand and its award on the table.
