Flow won this year’s Best Animated Feature award at the 97th Academy Awards. Andrew Garfield and Goldie Hawn presented the award to the film. Flow stands out among this year’s nominees because it comes from Latvia and has no dialogue.
The story follows a group of animals—a cat, a dog, a capybara, a secretarybird, and a ring-tailed lemur—as they try to survive rising floodwaters in a world where humans seem to be gone.
Instead of traditional dialogue, the film uses real animal sounds to express emotions. Latvian animator Gints Zilbalodis created this film over five years using Blender, an open-source animation software. The production budget was $3.6 million, and the film has earned $20 million worldwide.
Flow first premiered at Cannes last year, where critics praised it. The film also won Best Animated Feature Film at the Golden Globes and received a nomination for Best International Feature Film.
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The Nominees for the 2025 Best Animated Feature Oscar
Inside Out 2 became this year’s biggest box-office success. The Pixar sequel tells the story of Riley Anderson as she struggles with puberty and deals with new emotions entering her mind. The Wild Robot, based on Peter Brown’s well-known book, tells the story of a high-tech robot that finds a place among animals in the wilderness.
Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl marks the long-awaited return of the famous British stop-motion duo. This time, they face their old enemy, Feathers McGraw, once again. Stop-motion animation had another contender this year with Memoir of a Snail, a tragicomedy by Australian animator Adam Elliot.
Flow, the winning film, stands apart by having no dialogue and following animals as they struggle to survive a flood in a seemingly abandoned world. Gints Zilbalodis used Blender to bring this unique story to life.
Best Animated Feature remains one of the newer Oscar categories. First introduced in 2002, it has seen Pixar dominate with 11 wins and 19 nominations.
DreamWorks won the first-ever award with Shrek and later won again with Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005. Last year, Japan’s Studio Ghibli took home the award for the second time with The Boy and the Heron, an unusual and imaginative fable.
Flow has now joined the ranks of Oscar-winning animated films. Stay connected with Otakukart for more updates on the latest entertainment news.
