Surprise win of Flow brings 1st ever Oscar to Latvia, sparking national pride

The Associated Press

· Posted: Mar 03, 2025 12:16 PM EST | Last Updated: March 3

Flow, a wordless feline parable that became the archetypal Latvian movie to triumph an Academy Award, prompted a sleepless nighttime for the scores of Latvians celebrating the historical accolade. 

The movie won the Oscar for animated diagnostic astatine Sunday's 97th Academy Awards successful Los Angeles, which aired starting astatine 2 a.m. Monday for Latvians watching from their homes. Made with open-source bundle and a fund of little than $4 cardinal US, Flow nabbed the apical prize successful an upset implicit big-budget films specified arsenic DreamWorks Animations' The Wild Robot, and Disney and Pixar's container bureau smash, Inside Out 2.

After thanking his cats and dogs — one of which served arsenic the exemplary for a quality successful the movie — during his acceptance speech, filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis acknowledged the momentous quality of his win.

"I'm really moved by the lukewarm reception our movie has had. I anticipation this volition unfastened doors to autarkic animation filmmakers astir the world," Zilbalodis told the Los Angeles audience. "This is the archetypal clip a movie from Latvia has ever been nominated. So it truly means a batch to us."

The movie — called "Straume" successful Latvian — has been praised for utilizing Blender, a free, open-source animation bundle that tin tally connected astir laptops, to make the feature-length film. The effect is simply a dreamy aesthetic paired with a peaceful, yet post-apocalyptic, fable astir a achromatic cat, dog, capybara, ring-tailed lemur and caput vertebrate trying to past a catastrophic flood.

The movie has nary dialogue, utilizing its visuals and euphony unsocial to propulsion viewers into the improbable narration and knowing betwixt the taxon trying to flight the rising waters.

"I deliberation you tin explicit a batch much without words. Some of these emotions and ideas I couldn't articulate with words but with music, sound, question and editing, I tin accidental a batch more," said Zilbalodis backstage. "Those are my favourite kinds of films and favourite scenes and are precise cinematic and transcend taste boundaries."

'Great and historical time for Latvia'

The Oscar statuette is the latest root of hometown pridefulness for the Baltic state of astir 1.9 cardinal radical who person embraced Flow in droves since the satellite premiere astatine the Cannes Film Festival successful May 2024. The National Film Centre of Latvia, which was 1 of the backers of the film, called the movie "an unprecedented improvement successful the past of Latvian cinema."

More than 320,000 radical person watched it successful theatres across Latvia, an assemblage larger than immoderate different movie screened successful the state successful the past 30 years, according to the centre. And much than 15,000 radical implicit 10 days visited the Latvian National Museum of Art to spot the film's Golden Globe Award — also Latvia's archetypal — on nationalist show successful January.

To honour the film, Latvia released a peculiar stamp commemorating it, days earlier the Oscars ceremony.

In the centre of the capital, an creation installation acceptable up successful February inactive spells retired "RIGA" with Flow's cardinal achromatic feline perched atop the "A" to guarantee Latvians and tourists alike — including Latvian President Edgars Rinkēvičs, who snapped a photo with it Monday — can airs with the celebrated feline. 

"This is simply a large and historical time for Latvia!" Rinkēvičs wrote successful a station connected X celebrating the win. "And we volition each request clip to recognize what happened, due to the fact that thing large and beauteous occurred!" 

Prime Minister Evika Siliņa, successful her congratulations connected X to the filmmakers, added, "the feline continues to seizure the hearts of radical worldwide!"

Flow is lone Zilbalodis' 2nd animated movie arsenic a director. He was the sole animator connected his archetypal diagnostic film, 2019's Away. 

The triumph Sunday adds to an already awesome resumé for the director, which includes a champion animated diagnostic triumph astatine the Golden Globe Awards, the apical prize astatine the Ottawa International Animation Festival, and nominations from Critics Choice Awards, Annie Awards and British Academy Film Awards.

The occurrence of the movie is shared with producers Matīss Kaža, Ron Dyens and Gregory Zalcman. The Latvian, French and Belgian co-production was besides nominated for champion planetary diagnostic movie astatine the Academy Awards. 

The squad celebrated their triumph successful benignant pursuing the ceremony. In an Instagram post, Zilbalodis shared photos of himself at an In-N-Out, inactive decked retired successful his suit, a burger successful manus and his grant sitting connected the table.

It was a history-making nighttime for much than 1 planetary accumulation — when I Am Still Here scored champion planetary diagnostic film, it became the archetypal Brazilian movie to ever triumph successful that category.