Cannes 2024
Flow
Gints Zilbalodis’s second film, Flow, showcased in Cannes 2024’s Un Certain Regard, is a captivating animation that showcases his growth as a director. Unlike traditional animations, it features unique CGI and a profound poetic touch without dialogue or clear references. The story, centered on various animals surviving a post-apocalyptic flood, invites viewers on a visually dynamic journey filled with philosophical depth, echoing a sense of lost civilization and hidden treasures.
* * *
If two clues make a proof, then it’s time to begin discussing the work of Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis with the necessary distinctions. Rising to fame in 2019 – a ‘case’ at the Annecy Festival with his debut film Away, a digital animation that he entirely directed, wrote, edited, and scored at just 25 years old – we find him five years later in Un Certain Regard with the true hidden gem of the entire Cannes selection.
Compared to his previous work, Flow is a further step forward: an equally self-sufficient animated film (co-written with Matiss Kaz) but with extraordinarily mature direction, where the excellent technical craftsmanship is seamlessly integrated with a recognizable stylistic imprint.
What strikes the most is not just the use of CGI in a completely personal way – thus distancing from the artisanal models of auteur animation, like the hand-drawn works of Studio Ghibli, honored here in Cannes with the Honorary Palme d’Or – but the ability to transform the economy of production means into a poetic factor and creative fertility. The complete absence of dialogue, chronological anchors, literary or cinematic references, and the simultaneous mimetic approximation of figures, sketched but not clumsy, give this mysterious work its charm and distinctive character.
Certainly, the flood referenced in the title seems to allude to the great flood, and the boat on which this bizarre company drifts could be Noah’s Ark. However, the similarities break down in the total absence of human elements or an overtly eschatological discourse. Even survival is more a backdrop than a concept, with the apocalyptic foreshadowing kept relatively on the sidelines. Zilbalodis’ animals are not anthropomorphized like Disney characters. They remain animals, with the ‘traits’ of their species. In Flow, we have a cat – which clearly captures the director’s eye and inevitably ours – a dog, a capybara, a lemur, and a crane. They find themselves with their solitudes and vacant gazes, survivors and outcasts in a lost civilization setting.
Where are they headed? We don’t know, and neither do they. The journey will be fraught with trials and fears but also wonder, enigmas, and glimpses of primitive consciousness. Zilbalodis uses digital animation to its fullest potential, working on the non-aestheticized beauty of compositions and internal dynamism through the creation of complex and elegant long takes that give an unusual mobility to the visual. This movement is also a narrative trajectory and a path of discovery, where fairy tale, tension, comedy, and adventure combine in always surprising and effective ways, without losing sight of the mystery encapsulated in the unbiased gaze of the cat, with which we gradually align, much like that of a child.
Amid philosophical implications, benign disorientation, tributes to Béla Tarr (with an explicit citation in the finale of Werckmeister Harmonies…), and a fulfilling sense – playful, intellectual, and aesthetic – Flow floats in the viewer’s inner time like rippling water of a lost good. A small wave with the echo of hidden treasures, among the remnants and ruins of a silent future.
Gianluca Arnone
Cinematografo, May 22, 2024
