Straume (Flow) - An Oscar and Golden Globe winning film

What is this? A review?? From me?! Yeah. I do not think I have ever written a proper review of anything before. So, please bear with me through this attempt, ok? Ok. As you probably have already guessed from the title, this is about Straume or Flow (the English title version). The film’s creators are Gints Zilbalodis and Matīss Kaža, from my home country, Latvia. They and their Latvian team made Flow with friends and new creators/animators from France and Belgium.

Flow has become a national treasure of Latvia! We are beyond proud of the incredible achievements the guys and gals have reached! It is the first time a film from Latvia has succeeded to this level and won the most prestigious awards in cinema: Oscar for Best Animated Feature and Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film!

The story of Flow is especially remarkable since Latvia does not have a huge film industry. The financial support for films is tiny in comparison to other countries, not to mention Hollywood. A saying in Latvian comes to mind - mazs cinītis gāž lielu vezumu. That roughly translates to - the tiny bump flips the big carriage. The meaning of it is: that to achieve greatness, you do not always have to be a giant yourself. I imagine the small team of Flow probably felt like they were amongst giants at times, yet they found a way, they found the flow against all the odds and limitations to the highest heights.

When we go to the cinema to watch a film, most of us probably do not think about what techniques or tools were used in the creation process, right? Unless one is interested in the technicalities and wants to know as much as possible before seeing the end result. Usually, it happens the other way around. You are impressed with the end result and then go looking at how it was achieved.

As Flow began riding the wave of success, winning award after award, every news outlet in the country and people on social media started sharing more and more information about the unique ways it came to life. I learned early on that the entire film was created in Blender! That was even before I saw it on the big screen myself.

What is Blender, and what is so significant about it? Blender is free and open-source. You can even download it right now and begin learning to create things in 3D, the same as Gints Zilbalodis did when he started making Flow, with the limited budget he had. And as it turns out, the big film companies do not work with Blender for various reasons. I found this guy making a pretty compelling case as to why in his video about it. But because Blender is open-source, it is also highly customizable to your needs with a little bit of help from a developer who knows how to code, or you can even make some things with the endless tutorials available online today, which is exactly what Gints opted for. Pretty inspiring, right?! Blender’s wiki even happily promotes Flow in the second paragraph of their page now and has a screencap from Flow on their startup screen of its latest version! ^^

So, yes! I went to see the film with those eyes!

Now I would like to talk about the film itself. The human language in the sense of language is absent in Flow. As you get comfortable in your seat, you embark on a journey that follows a cat in a world in which humans are mere echoes and ghosts of the past. Where did they go? What happened here? Was that laughter? It seems there are remnants of human activity. But nature sweeps all over it and, with a flooding wave, takes the cat away from its home onto an old wooden boat where he meets other animals, some of which perhaps used to be pets, trying to escape the dangers of the water.

Even without language, the story is told through the animals, their interactions with one another, and through their experiences. In my view, this gives Flow extra layers of depth as it allows you to interpret and grasp what is happening in the story through observation and what touches you as an individual. The animals act in their typical animal ways. Maybe they appear slightly more clever or humanlike in some moments for story-steering purposes.

Giants Zilbalodis himself has said in one of the countless interviews I have seen that he does not like to “spoon-feed the audience”, which is pretty cool, if you ask me!

Five minutes into the film I was in tears. I never stood a chance since I am a caretaker of a fluff ball named Pūciņa myself. I could easily imagine her in the place of the kitty of Flow. It got me fully.

Once my attention was captivated to follow the characters, it never let go. The story seemed to unfold in one weaving brushstroke. All of it was enhanced with a sense of the mysterious, ever-changing world around them, the discovery of it together with the animals and the music! The film's music was created by Gints Zilbalodis himself, together with Rihards Zaļupe. It is enchanting and full of emotion. If your eyes were closed and did not see the stunning, whimsical visuals flowing before you, you would still be going on a journey colored in rhythm, almost like in meditation!

Flow has something for everyone. It is simply beautiful and will make you laugh, cry, and leave you full of thought and perhaps inspiration. I invite you to find a way to see it, as it is worth every minute of your time!

If you cannot find it on a silver screen near you, Flow is now available on the biggest streaming platforms such as Max, Amazon Prime, Apple TV, and others.