Top Pick - Flow
Oscar Tidbit: Flow took home the 2025 Oscar for Best Animated Feature—rightfully deserved. It faced stiff competition from The Wild Robot, Memoirs of a Snail, and Inside Out 2, with a few less memorable entries (looking at you, Wallace and Gromit).
A bold, dialogue-free animated film, Flow is a visually stunning 3DCG masterpiece from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis. He made some bold decisions and took major risks – he also took home the Oscar. Meanwhile, I took home a cat. Seriously, this movie made me buy a cat. Welcome Gretel!
At its heart, Flow is a journey of animals navigating the primal tension between individualism and community. It’s fascinating that two of last year’s biggest animated films, Flow and The Wild Robot, transport us to landscapes devoid of people—worlds brimming with nature, breathtaking scenery, and untamed wildlife. Perhaps it’s a foreshadowing of a not-so-distant future, a post-human timeline where Earth quietly heals from our transgressions.
The story follows a little black cat whose home is flooding. Forced out of its solitary existence, the independent feline embarks on a journey aboard a drifting boat alongside a capybara—the gentlest of rodents. More animals join: a Labrador, a majestic bird, and an unruly lemur. As this unlikely crew forms a fragile community, they quickly learn that one individual's actions ripple across the whole group, sometimes with dire consequences.
The film’s most breathtaking moments weave together dreamlike visuals and an inherent spirituality. The score enhances both the tension and the tranquility, immersing us in a world where survival isn’t about strength, but kindness.
Flow is a 90-minute meditation on solidarity, packed with layers of symbolism—a biblical flood, animals on an ark, human artifacts clinging to existence, and a self-absorbed lemur unable to look away from his own reflection. In a time of uncertainty, the film offers a simple but profound truth: it is not selfishness, but togetherness, that carries us forward on the ever-changing current of life.
