In an awards season filled with unexpected twists and blistering controversies, an indie film, Flow, winning the Golden Globe award for Best Motion Picture (Animated), was a welcome surprise for the independent production company at Dream Well Studio. The past few years have been dominated by the usual suspects in animation—industry titans like DreamWorks, Disney, Pixar, and Studio Ghibli. But this year, a team in Latvia, a country not well-known for its animation industry, took the trophy instead.
Flow follows the story of a cat who gets swept up in a catastrophic flood and teams up with other animals to survive. Told without dialogue, the film explores the lives of its characters through stylistic animation reminiscent of Breath of the Wild, real recordings of animals, and heart-wrenching music.
What was most incredulous about the film was that it had a budget of about four million dollars, much of it publicly funded, compared to Inside Out’s $200 million budget, and was animated using Blender, a free and open-source 3d graphics software.
The competition for the 2024 Golden Globe Awards was tight. Sequels of beloved movies like Inside Out 2, Moana 2, and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl and the film adaptation of The Wild Robot were some of its contenders. Many of these films made over $100 million at the worldwide box office, compared to Flow’s $20 million. Previously, media outlets like Variety predicted that either Wallace & Gromit or The Wild Robot would win.
Since its Golden Globe win in January, the movie has been widely celebrated in Latvia. Passing over 300,000 admissions in Latvia, Flow has become the highest-grossing film in its history. Thousands of Latvians lined up to see the Golden Globe at the Latvian National Museum. There’s even a statue of the Flow cat sitting atop the Riga name sign.
Additionally, Flow‘s unexpected win signals the start of a new direction for animation. In an interview with Animation Scoop, Flow director Gints Zalbodis expressed his hopes for the future of indie filmmaking.
“I think it’s exciting that nowadays there’s tools available and resources online that films like this can be made in places where there isn’t a big industry,” Zalbodis said. “And this allows a bigger variety of perspectives and different kinds of voices telling their stories and using different kinds of techniques as well. We’ll see all kinds of different looking films and different feeling films.”
The film has received two Oscar nominations for Best Animated Feature and Best International Feature Film. Whether the Oscars will follow other awards programs and give Flow another win has yet to be seen. But either way, maybe it’s time for the animation industry to step aside and let smaller voices in.
