On Sunday night, January 5, Flow, a foreign independent film, took home one of the most significant awards for the night at the 82nd Golden Globes Award.
In a category often dominated by big-budget films from renowned companies like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks, the indie animated movie was already underestimated – many found it a feat that a project with a modest $3.7 million budget even received a nomination. However, the under-cat film took home the big hardware, beating out Moana 2, Inside Out 2, The Wild Robot, Memoirs of a Snail, and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Unlike its competitors, Flow was animated using Blender, a free and open-source software often used by amateur animators. It is the first Blender-made production to win a Golden Globe award for animation.
The flow includes no dialogue and follows a black cat who has survived an apocalyptic flood that has left the world devoid of human life. The cat joins a crew of other animals aboard a boat that travels across the now-submerged planet.
Though much smaller in the US, Flow has had a successful awards season. It premiered first at Cannes and went on to win awards at film festivals in Annecy, Ottawa, Guadalajara, and Melbourne. Flow is also a contender at the Critics Choice Awards, which will be held on January 12, 2025.
The film’s director, Gints Zilbalodis, noted the importance of such a small film winning the prestigious award in his acceptance speech on Sunday night. “This film is made by a tiny young but passionate team in a place where there isn’t a big film industry,” he said. “So this is the first time that a film from Latvia has been here, so this is huge for us.”
Flow’s big Globes win put the small film on the radar of prominent critics. Though previously considered a long shot for the prestigious “Best Animated Picture” award at the Oscars, with most favoring Wallace and Gromit or The Wild Robot, Flow now has strong prospects. A victory for Flow, or any other non-Disney film, will also make history, as the company has never gone more than two years without a category win but hit a drought after losing out the 2023 Academy Awards to The Boy and the Heron and the 2022 Awards to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
