Awards season can be a dispiriting period for cinephiles and movie critics, who often wince to see the truly deserving get snubbed and the magic and creativity of filmmaking be subsumed by popularity, strategy, momentum, and, this year in particular, controversy. Add in cringe-worthy acceptance speeches and the same insipid anecdotes duly trotted out across numerous interviews, and it’s enough to make anyone cynical.
But as the awards industrial complex has creaked into gear once again, I’ve managed to find solace this year in a singular oasis of sincere joy and a genuine celebration of craft and artistry: Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis’s Instagram feed.
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The 30-year-old is the director of Flow, a dialogue-free animated tale about a cat and a motley crew of fellow critters stranded together in a postapocalyptic world. Acclaimed by both critics and audiences, it has made history with Academy Award nominations for best international and best animated feature (the first Latvian production nominated for any Oscar), in addition to a Golden Globe win last month (again a first for any Latvian film) and BAFTA, Independent Spirit Award, and PGA nominations. Not bad for being made on a shoestring budget and created using free, open-source software.
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Through Zilbalodis, who skipped university and taught himself animation (as his country had no animation schools) plus sound design and musical composition, we can follow the film’s incredible journey through unjaundiced eyes. There are snippets of Flow, influences and adorable inspirations, bits of concept art and tongue-in-cheek advice to other filmmakers, notes on the animators’ dedication to accuracy, behind-the-scenes and process images, and extremely essential content of a real cat absolutely mesmerized by Flow (part of a whole movement). He also shares his experience at various awards shows, parties, and screenings, including one in Busan, Korea, with a jaw-dropping audience of 4,500.
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The posts also provide a heartwarming glimpse of the outpouring of goodwill that has trailed the film, including a video of some of the thousands of people who lined up to see the film’s Golden Globe statuette when it was on display last month—guarded by two cat statues—in Riga, Latvia’s capital. That city, as Zilbalodis told Deadline, has found itself strewn with Flow posters and cat graffiti, as the film “has provided a kind of uplifting feeling for Latvia.”
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Befitting an admirer of what he calls the “peaceful and chill” capybara, Zilbalodis comes off as exceedingly low-key and humble; his Oscar-nomination reaction video shows him munching on an apple and cuddling his dog. And which other filmmaker can boast a god-tier New York Times photo shoot at a cat cafe?
Given the dire state of the world, I can’t shake the dread of firing up social media, but I do now have something to look forward to: a dose of wholesome positivity from Gints Zilbalodis. I’ll be rooting for him and Flow come March 2.
