How an animated charmer about a lost cat beat Hollywood’s biggest hits at the Oscars

It was the feelgood story of the Academy Awards this week – the little-known animated film Flow winning the first Oscar for the tiny northern European nation of Latvia.

But how did a tiny film with no dialogue beat Hollywood’s and Britain’s most celebrated animation studios, as well as a wonderful Australian film, Memoir of a Snail, from past Oscar winner Adam Elliot?

A tiny-budget film with no dialogue: Flow.Credit: Madman

Backstage at the Oscars, Latvian writer-director Gints Zilbalodis seemed to be wondering the same thing.

“It’s a crazy thing that happened,” he said, Oscar in hand. “I feel very lucky, and I feel inspired to make more films. I’m celebrating tonight, I guess.”

It was an unlikely win.

After triumphing at the Producers Guild Awards, the Oscar favourite was DreamWorks Animation’s The Wild Robot, a worldwide box office and critically acclaimed hit. DreamWorks had already won best animated feature at the Oscars twice with 13 more nominations.

Also in contention was Inside Out 2, made by Pixar Animation Studios, which has won the same Oscar 11 times with another eight nominations.

With the voices of such Hollywood stars as Amy Poehler, Diane Lane and Maya Hawke, it took an exceptional $US1.7 billion ($2.6 billion) at the worldwide box office – a record superseded only this month by China’s Ne Zha 2, with most of its money made in its home country.

Not a word is said, as the animals in Flow behave like animals, yet the film has so much heart.Credit: Madman

Britain’s Aardman Animations, another previous winner at the Oscars, was nominated again for the Netflix film Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

The idiosyncratic Memoir of a Snail took Adam Elliot back to the Oscars just over two decades after he won best animated short with Harvie Krumpet. His film cost $7 million – very modest by Hollywood standards, but still more than the budget for Flow.

Thirty-year-old Zilbalodis and a small team made it for just $5.7 million over 5½ years. And, remarkably, they made it using a free, open-source computer graphics software tool called Blender.

Up to the Oscars, Flow had taken just $US17 million around the world – 1 per cent of Inside Out 2’s box office. But when you watch Flow, the mystery of why it won is solved.

It’s a beautiful and touching film about a cat lost in a world where humans have disappeared in an apocalyptic flood, seeking refuge from rising waters. Along the way, the cat meets other animals seeking higher ground.

Unlike Hollywood animations, the animals don’t speak, and they mostly act like animals rather than humans.

Zilbalodis warrants comparisons to Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki, who has won feature animation Oscars with Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron for his gentle, meditative storytelling, emotional depth, rich images and universal themes.

While Flow has been largely unseen here ahead of its cinema release on March 20, overseas reviewers have raved.

“A joy to experience but also a deeply affecting story, the work of a unique talent who deserves to be ranked among the world’s great animation artists,” The Hollywood Reporter said.

Deadline called it “a magical mystery tour into a sinking world, a wondrous, haunting, mystical and beautiful motion picture, something so unique it almost feels like a dream”.

Elliot is also a fan, calling Flow “wonderful” before the Oscars and saying the use of open-source software had made animation more accessible.

Flow unfolds in a world that seems to have lost its humans to catastrophic flooding.Credit: Madman

“It means that finally animation is getting cheaper to make, and it’s becoming more egalitarian,” he said.

Elliot thought the Oscars field that lined up three giant studios against two independent films showed how much animation was in transition.

“It used to be that all five films would be [from] Hollywood studios,” he said. “We’ve got agents over there now, and they’re telling me that Hollywood has been forced to look outwards because the old formulas aren’t working.

“Apart from [Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot], a lot of the CGI-animated films are bombing. They’re not making their money back.”

Backstage, Zilbalodis agreed about the transformative power of the open-source software he used.

“Any kid now has tools that are used to make … Academy Award-winning films,” he said. “I think we’re going to see all kinds of exciting films being made from kids who might not have had a chance to do this before.”

Zilbalodis described Blender, which has been used to create visual effects and animation scenes for a few other films as well as video games, art, 3D-printed models, motion graphics and virtual reality, as a great tool.

“It’s not in any way a compromise,” he said. “It’s just as good as anything out there, and we’re going to use it also for my next film.”

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