'Flow' Takes The Golden Globe

 

It's a new year and the awards season keeps on rolling on. The first major event of 2025 is the Golden Globes, the sometimes controversial awards from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Often seen as a bellwether for the Oscars, but in recent years have shown a willingness to go their own way, at least in the Best Animated Feature category. 

The Globes have been gradually getting more adventurous in the animated films they nominate, moving away from purely big-studio fare. This year's nominees were a mix of the two, with Inside Out 2, The Wild Robot and Moana 2 rubbing shoulders with Memoir Of A Snail, Flow and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.

The ultimate victor was most unexpected: Flow. Gints Zilbalodis's dialogue-free film is his follow-up to Away, a film he made virtually single-handedly. The film has won several Best Animated Feature Awards on the awards circuit, but this is its first major award- and the first ever Golden Globe for Latvia. Does the win make Flow favourite to win come Oscar time? Not necessarily, as the Globes have proven to occasionally go their way as shown by previous winners Missing Link and How To Train Your Dragon 2. It does however seem to improve its odds.

Flow tells the story of a solitary cat, whose home is destroyed in a great flood. He has to learn to team up with a boat-full of other species and work together despite their differences. The film was selected for the Un Certain Regard at Cannes Festival and screened in competition at Annecy, where it won both the Jury and Audience awards, as well as taking home an award for its music. Flow also won Best Animated Feature at the European Film Awards, and was nominated for two Annie Awards. Surely an Oscar nomination is in the film's future?

Animation was nominated elsewhere but went home empty handed. The new Cinematic and Box Office Achievement award saw both Inside Out 2 and The Wild Robot nominated alongside Deadpool & Wolverine, Gladiator 2, and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, all of which lost out to Wicked.

The Wild Robot was also nominated for Best Score and Best Original Song, taking its total nominations up to an amazing four. It's a shame that wasn't reflected in any wins, but it was impressive nonetheless.