Flow: this quietly transportive animation is a skin-prickling wonder

With a gentle sense of post-apocalyptic mystery, this low-budget joy sets a raft of animals adrift in a flooded, Ghibli-esque world

4/5
There is a certain mood in post-apocalyptic storytelling that video games tend to pull off far better than films. Think the monuments and mausoleums of the CD-ROM classic Myst, or the overgrown ruins of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – they are abandoned Arcadias where explorers feel more like trespassers, and which all look as if they might have been deserted at eerily short notice.
The quietly wondrous new animation Flow, better captures that vibe than perhaps any movie before it. Directed by Latvia’s Gints Zilbalodis (behind 2019’s equally transportive Away), it’s a family-friendly Noah’s Ark fable in which Noah himself is a no-show: just a cat, some dogs, a capybara, a lemur, a white stalk-legged bird and a boat, plus a strange flooded landscape for this rag-tag menagerie to cross in it.
Mixed-species friendship groups in CG toons are hardly uncharted terrain. But Flow is not trying to be Madagascar 4: the animals largely move and behave like their real-world equivalents would (though arguably the lemur has a touch of King Julien about him), and – crucially – none of them can or do talk. Miaow, bark, snuffle, squawk and so on, absolutely. But the film unfolds entirely without dialogue, and it’s testament to the light-touch precision of the characterisation and storytelling that there isn’t a moment at which an expository line or two feels required.
Indeed, the currents of mystery flowing through Flow are one of the best reasons to watch it. The cause of the flooding goes unexplained, as does the purpose of the animals’ journey through it. And while it soon becomes clear that they’re making for a cluster of rocky pinnacles on the horizon, we’re left to wonder if they’re heading there consciously, or are being carried – purposefully or otherwise – on the floodwaters’ tides.
There are no humans around, but traces of their former presence stand here and there like Shelley’s vast and trunkless legs of stone, each one posing more questions than it answers. (Does that enormous cat sculpture on the hillside accord our feline hero saviour status?) At one point, the animals’ voyage takes them through a vast and ancient Ghibli-esque metropolis. But no clues are shared as to its origins or purpose.
Though the characters’ rough-hewn look probably has as much to do with the film’s tight €3.5 million budget as its visual approach, Flow’s immersive, in-the-moment aesthetic (another quality it shares with video games) sets it apart from its more lavish studio peers.
Compounding the indie flavour, many sequences look as if they were captured on hand-held cameras: you feel as if the animators are jumping into the water alongside their creations, or scampering after them down forest trails. Flow might be a digital confection, but it’s also open, alive, elemental. In every sense, it’s a breath of fresh air.
Screening at the London Film Festival. UK cinemas in early 2025
4/5