There’s a house inside a forest and within lives peacefully a single creature: a cat, content with its hermit life in a world teeming with the vestiges of a human presence. But one day a great flood comes and turns the cat’s life upside down, causing the animal to seek refuge in a small boat. A boat that is already populated with a variety of other species with which the cat must team up despite their differences.

“Flow” is an outsider from every angle: an independent production from Latvia, made by a small team in an open-source software with a budget of less than 4 million dollars. A film that not only renounces any spoken dialogue, but also barely anthropomorphizes its non-human cast and lets them act like real animals, including sound design taken from their real-life counterparts. And still, this film managed to outdo all its high-budget contenders from big studios and won a Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Animated Feature. “Flow” is not just a dreamy adventure story with a cute cat at its center. It’s a visually and musically stunning experience with an immersive world and a profound sense for emotional storytelling, even without a single word uttered. If last semesters “Robot Dreams” was right up your alley, you owe it to yourself to experience this journey. (SaL)