Fealty

Stray cat breaks into Lynx’s enclosure at zoo

a lonely black cat with trust issues

(who has to learn that sometimes it's okay to accept help)

a kind capybara that's happy to share in its luck

(who portrays how even the most steady presence in your life might need a hand once in a while)

a good dog that just wants to be friends

(who has to learn that sometimes making real friends means learning how not to follow bad ones)

a heroic secretarybird that faces bullies for a stranger

(who shows how sometimes constantly fighting for the right thing can leave one exhausted to the bone)

and a kleptomaniac lemur that just wants to stare at its reflection

Even as just screencaps the emotions of the animals are so clear like...

...you know exactly what it is that's happening, and how the coexisting on this single boat is going for them, how their individual animal instincts are getting triggered...

...as well as the terror and the awe of being a small bean in a huge universe where everything is out of your control and just so, so big...

...and the always constant threat of danger that makes them cling to that little bit of safety they've found on this boat.

It's... simply put, a beautiful animated movie with a stunning visual language wrapped in a story about a cat that finds unlikely friendships on a boat surrounded by water in a post apocalyptic world.

It's a movie where the dialogue is absent... because it is entirely unnecessary.

‘FLOW’ WINS THE BEST ANIMATED FILM AT THE OSCARS 🏆 YIPPEEEEEEE 🎉

not only because it was made with a free and open source software anyone can use, not only because it beat competitors from major studios with an average of 3% of the budget they had, not only because it represented a country that had never won an oscar before, not only because it didn't have any star power involved, not only because it didn't come from a filmmaker with past history, not only because it was made by a small team...

but also because it's an animated movie

animators often get the short end of the stick in the entertainment industry and, for the past years, it was starting to look as if the only way to make an animated project happen was to sell your soul to a major studio and see your work transformed into what they need and how they want it marketed

especially for movies from outside the US, from non-English speaking countries, where insanely talented animators tend to be used as freelance cheap labor for major US studios or have to adapt as much as possible to fit into their market in order to find work

passion projects for animation seemed to only be reserved to the shorts category, or needed to be as high brow as humanly possible to be perceived as "high art" to be valued and, even in the spaces of the industry dedicated to the genre, the way in which awards are distributed are a poor reflection of the vast work animators do

it's major for this film to win awards, let alone the oscar, an award which is notably judged badly for animation and often prefers the marketable easy way out of voting rather than genuine interest

this movie used a resource that is open to anyone and, with good storytelling, made an oscar winning film