Matīss Kaža

Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis’s impeccable fable Flow is again proof of Guillermo Del Toro’s maxim that animation is cinema – “It’s a medium for art, it’s a medium for film, and I think animation should stay in the conversation.” Del Toro argued that animation is not just for children and Flow, although family friendly, is a sophisticated metaphor for the effects for environmental crises, and for the experience of refugees trying to stay alive and learning to trust each other despite linguistic and cultural differences. Flow is a work of immense cinematic art. A film with no dialogue and no humans that speaks to both the human condition and considers the immensity of the natural world which is suffering because of our failures as a species. Flow is a profound, emphatic, and empathetic experience.