VIFF Review: Flow

The wordless animated film features a black cat

What happens to the animals when a tsunami hits their environment? That's what the animated film Flow finds out in a co-production by Latvia, France and Belgium. There is no dialogue in the 84-minute film, though the animators take a bit of liberty with the animals' abilities.

Viewers first meet a cute black cat in what looks like a forested area, but after being chased by a pack of dogs, there is a herd of deer trying to outrun a massive flood of water that the cat gets caught up in.

The animals navigate flooded areas by boat

The feline encounters a boat and meets a capybara, a secretary bird, a lemur and a labrador, one of the dogs earlier. Together this rag-tag group, but in particular the cat realises through the challenges they encounter that they need each other to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

The film is gorgeous -- some scenes look very real with the reflection of the water and the abandoned buildings, while the animals look slightly cartoonish, but that only makes them more endearing. There are several amusing points in the movie to lighten the mood and change the pace, but overall it moves along and isn't a drag.

It's interesting there are no humans in the movie, though there are many things they have left behind, like buildings and statues that have outlived them; the animals seems to adapt quite well to these places.

One of the animals the cat meets is a capybara

Hope to see Flow in wide release and curious to see how children in particular think of the film.

Flow

Directed by Gints Zilbalodis

84 minutes

2024