Gints Zilbalodis’ ‘Flow’ Takes Home the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature

Gints Zilbalodis’ acclaimed feature Flow was the winner of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature on Sunday night. The five other nominees in the category were Kelsey Mann’s Inside Out 2 (Pixar), Adam Elliot’s Memoir of a Snail (IFC Films), David G. Derrick Jr., Jason Hand &  Dana Ledoux Miller’s Moana 2, Nick Park & Merlin Crossingham’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Netflix/Aardman) and Chris Sanders’ The Wild Robot (DreamWorks).

Accepting the award, Zilbalodis thanked his producers Ron Dyens and Gregory Zalcman who joined him on the stage. The director added, “This film was made by a very small, young and very passionate team in a place where there’s isn’t a very big film industry: This is the first time a film from Latvia has been here so it’s huge for us. This is a very personal story for me because I used to work alone. I made my first film by myself, but this time I worked with a team. Just like the cat [in the movie] I had to trust others and learn how to collaborate and overcome our differences and I think it’s very important nowadays especially now more than ever. Thank you so much for embracing our little cat film.”

Flow, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival and won the top prize at Annecy in June, has been a critics’ darling all over the world. It received many of the year-end critics prizes and is also nominated for BAFTA, European Film Awards and Annie Awards. It was released by Janus Films/Sideshow in the U.S. on Nov. 22. The film has a very impressive 97% score on Rotten Tomatoes and has grossed $6.834 million to date. The underdog Latvian movie was able to beat heavyweight U.S. studio features like DreamWorks’ widely acclaimed The Wild Robot, Disney/Pixar’s Inside Out 2 and Aardman’s much-loved Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

Watch below:

You can read our interview with Zilbalodis here.

Analysis: The Golden Globes have a strong correlation record for best animated feature with the Academy Awards, only misaligning their top choices four times since both races have been part of the awards season animation circuit.  Disney and Pixar have dominated the category with the exception of 2012 when Steven Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin won the Globe, 2015 (DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon 2), 2019 (Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse), 2020 (LAIKA’s The Missing Link), 2023 (Netflix’s Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio) and 2024 (GKIDS’ The Boy and the. Heron). The win by Flow bodes well for the film’s chances at the Academy Awards as well.

Best Animated Feature: Oscars vs. Golden Globes

The next big date on the awards season calendar is Friday, Jan. 17, when this year’s Academy Awards nominations will be revealed. Also, don’t forget to mark your calendars for Saturday, Feb. 8, when the 52nd Annie Awards will take place at UCLA’s Royce Hall.