When this year’s Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature were announced, Flow’s director Gints Zilbalodis posted a clip of himself reacting to the nominations. (Months later, he would go on to win the award.) In the video, Zilbalodis is watching from his bedroom, his yellow labrador by his side, not another soul in sight. At the mention of his film, he smiles and mumbles a few words to his companion.
But dogs can’t speak our language or comprehend the notion of industry recognition. So, instead, Zilbalodis simply nestles his head into the animal’s side, speaking in terms that his pet can understand and, in turn, they gently nuzzle him back. It’s a beautiful, simple, wordless moment – as beautiful, simple, and wordless as Flow, which the Latvian filmmaker created entirely on the free-to-use open-source software Blender, relying only on a small team of animators and a minuscule budget of $3.7m (£2.8m).
