Since its release and up to this day, many of us (yes, I’m including myself in this conversation) have given Flow—the biggest winner at the latest edition of the Oscars—a different meaning. Sorry, dear Anora, yours is a topic for another article I’m working on, and trust me, it will be at least somewhat controversial for a lot of people. But I have my reasons for making this statement with such enthusiasm.
Some even went as far as naming the cat after the film’s title, and around the symbolism embedded in the movie, countless texts and videos have been created, packed with analyses that aspire to be deep (some do achieve a certain level of depth) and plenty of empty chatter. Flow means “to move in one direction, especially continuously and easily,” something many of us overlooked and took for granted. But what’s far from trivial and actually of great importance is that the original title of this beautiful spiritual journey is Straume, which, when translated from Latvian (its original language), means “stream”. So? What’s your point, Jerónimo?
What relevance could an accurate and precise translation (something that happens maybe 0.00001% of the time) have in the context of this piece? Well, in this case, I’ll quote our dear Wikipedia on what a stream actually is:
A stream is a natural flow of water that usually runs continuously, but unlike a river, it has a low water volume, which can even disappear during the dry season—summer or winter—depending on the rainy season for its existence.
Over the course of eighty minutes, we follow the story of a cat surviving in the midst of a catastrophe that seems to have wiped out all of humanity—seen entirely from its perspective. To go into detail about the journey our protagonist embarks on would be to paraphrase my previous article, where I shared my most spontaneous thoughts on the movie. But after watching it for a second time, I want to focus on the lessons it left me. This time, my second viewing was actually my first time watching it in a theater, and the experience proved to be incredibly enriching in terms of self-discovery. Below, I´ll explain this further with five life lessons the film left me with. And I also break down what the word stream could truly mean.
1. FAMILY IS A CHOICE
"YOU DON'T CHOOSE YOUR FAMILY." This is an incredibly common saying, almost always thrown around in conversations about the darker sides of “blood family.” The truth is, my relationship with my family is somewhat complicated—distant, strained, and far from fulfilling. Long gone are the Sundays filled with pasta, jumping in the pool with my cousins, or taking road trips to the countryside with my parents and sister. But that’s okay. It’s part of life—unpredictable, surprising, ever-evolving.
Today, I have different plans. I’m not trying to reconstruct the past, but rather learn from it. Who was I? Who do I want to be now? In Flow, our lovable kitten had a family and lost it. He’s distrustful, struggling to believe that there’s anything beyond that home that’s flooding around him. Wouldn’t we all be the same if we went through something similar? Family is a choice. Every single day. And it can be made up of a capybara, a lemur, a Labrador, and a cat. Just as exotic and beautiful as that.
2. HUMANS USE WAY TOO MANY WORDS
Language—no matter what language we speak—is essential to communication. There’s no debate around that. But Flow can turn out to be a fascinating exercise in patience. During the showing I attended a few days ago, several people around me displayed behaviors ranging from outright disrespectful to plain ignorant and senseless. The most glaring example? A woman sitting next to a girl, about twelve years old, narrating everything happening on screen. The girl didn’t seem to have any difficulty whatsoever understanding the images unfolding before her. The characters in Flow meow, bark, and make different sounds to communicate, but everything is conveyed through body language. Would it have been so hard for this woman to just let the girl absorb the images? This not only filled me with growing frustration but also made me reflect on our absolute inability to embrace silence, our constant need to make noise.
3. WE ARE SOCIAL BEINGS
I hate to admit it, but it’s true. Whether you’re a cat, a dog or a human, we are made for social connection. Our protagonist’s journey mirrors that of its creator, Gints Zilbalodis. The director has stated in multiple interviews (like the one I leave in the link below) that he used to prefer working alone, without anyone’s help, locked in his room, creating and editing everything himself. Flow’s cat avoids others at all costs until it realizes that survival is only possible together. Zilbalodis instantly knew that, in making a film far more ambitious than his previous works, teamwork was irremediably unavoidable.
Personally, I believe in this process because I’m living through it right now. I consider myself a not-very-social person, but when I form genuine connections, I do so with pure feeling. I’ve always tried to stay away from the fake, robotic nature of modern society. Zilbalodis demonstrates to be a humble being, with a huge heart hidden beneath his typically serious Eastern European appearance: he was simply waiting for his film to reflect who he truly is. And he did it with a message so simple yet so powerful that it reaches every corner of the world, without borders. We need each other.
4. MAKING MOVIES TODAY… IS MORE ACCESSIBLE THAN EVER
The monumental lesson Flow gave—not just to Disney and all of Hollywood but to the entire film industry—is that making it to the top does not mean sending thousands of emails to executives begging for funding. With patience, a strong network, and a few trips to France and Belgium, Zilbalodis brought this film to life using publicly available, free animation software. The next great story might just be waiting to be told as you read this on your computer. Isn’t that simply incredible? While many studios are wasting hundreds of millions of dollars unnecessarily, a Latvian filmmaker, in the silence of his home, was creating a universal, deep, and timeless story, which changed the creative process of filmmaking forever.
Going back to my initial point, water in Flow is arguably the most important element in the entire work. But the meaning of “stream” speaks about life’s constant fluctuation—to all the elements that make this journey so mysterious and full of discovery. Water rises and falls in the movie with ferocity, either swallowing everything in seconds or exposing it all in an instant. There is no way to anticipate what’s coming next. Just like the kitten, we have no idea what the next move in our existence will be. Today, we’re here. Tomorrow, maybe not. But we do know one thing: no matter how much water covers us—or how much of it we lack—we exist. We are something. What are we? Perhaps the journey itself defines that, and we´re just tiny specks in infinity, making choices every single moment.
Posted on MARCH 15, 2025, 12:12 PM | UTC-GMT -3
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