How ‘Flow’ turned a $4 million budget into an animated work of art

The filmmakers used open-source software to create an unexpectedly fresh animation style.

Nearly every still of the animated film Flow, directed by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, feels like an art piece that could stand on its own. The movie—which centers around a group of animals surviving in a post-apocalyptic, human-less world—combines the edge-of-your-seat feeling of a survival video game with the painterly brushstrokes of an Impressionist artist. And, somehow, it manages to be a tearjerker without any dialogue at all.