How to watch Flow in New Zealand
If you only watch one Oscar-winning Latvian animated film about a cat this year, make it this one
Every so often, a genuinely unique film breaks through from the cultural ghetto to mainstream acclaim. In the year of our Lord 2025, that film is Flow.
How to watch Flow in New Zealand
Flow is screening in New Zealand cinemas and available to rent or buy digitally from March 10, 2025.
What is Flow about?
A cat!
But in greater detail…
…um, well.
In a seemingly post-apocalyptic world devoid of humans, a cat teams up with a golden retriever, a lemur, and a capybara to survive a devastating flood, the motley group of animals crewing a sailboat together. Then a mutant whale shows up. And some antagonistic secretary birds. And then things get really weird.
It’s all very strange and very dreamlike, opaque in many ways (there is no dialogue, and how intelligent these animals are is up for debate) but utterly arresting. Director Gints Zilbalodis and his team spent five and a half years making this thing, utilising the free and open source 3D graphics program, Blender. They were rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature the other week for their troubles, and Flow stands as the most-viewed film in Latvian history.
The cast of Flow
Nobody! There’s no dialogue. Easiest section we’ve ever written. Thank you, Latvia. Not doing the word count any favours, though.
Flow trailer
Why we’re excited about Flow
C’mon now, how could you not be? A singular indie animated film, made for peanuts, espousing a truly idiosyncratic cinematic vision, that even the moribund Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was compelled to heap praise upon? All artistic considerations aside—and Flow‘s artistic achievements are nothing to sneeze at—when we talk about the potential for digital tools to democratise art, this is exactly the sort of thing we’re talking about. So many movies get pegged as “must see” cinematic experiences, but Flow strikes us as one that really does deserve that label.
