The winner of the 2025 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was a surprise to many, as an indie Latvian-Belgian-French co-produced film called “Flow” won rather than Pixar’s highest-grossing animated film, “Inside Out 2.” The film’s new approach to animated storytelling was recognized over the more popular choice.
“Flow” is the first Latvian film to win an Academy Award and centers around a solitary cat whose home is devastated by a flood in a post-apocalyptic society. Directed by Gints Zilbalodis, the film is entirely dialogue-free. It has a unique painted style that gives the illusion of traditional painting, according to animation fans like Katelyn Yee, a young animator at Carlmont High School.
“I’m excited about the changes in animation style that people are starting to experiment with. Movies like ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ and its sequel, which greatly impacted the way animated films are stylized today, make me really interested in what animation will look like in just a couple of years from now,” Yee said.
Michael O’Brien, who worked at Pixar for 22 years and then later at Technicolor for two, shares Yee’s hope for the future of animation.
“More and more distributors are looking for animated content. There are so many voices and styles now. I think it’s a great time to be animating and be someone who likes watching animation,” O’Brien said, touching on the animation industry.
Yee hopes that animated material like the Netflix film series “Arcane,” the “Spider-Verse” franchise, and “Flow” will continue to inspire new innovative and stylized content in the industry. Despite its many challenges, she’s motivated to make a career out of the medium.
“Animation is something I do want to try pursuing in the future, though I’m still trying to figure out what part of the process I want to pursue,” Yee said.
Animation fans and creators, both professional and recreational, have differing opinions on what evolving technology means for the future of animation.
“The speed and computing power we have now is astounding compared to where I started. In high school, I built a computer using mail-in catalogs and screwdrivers. It had 4 megabytes of random access memory, which was considered a ton, no internet, and all of my learning was in the library or via snail mail. You carry a mini film studio around in your pocket with your smartphone now that can instantly get answers from around the world,” O’Brien said.
Since the beginning of animation with traditionally illustrated flipbooks, the process has changed, and new tools are emerging every year to industrialize the process further. Following the usage of digital 2D animating programs like Adobe came 3D software, and now many people believe AI is the next step in revolutionizing the process.
Many artists and animators have voiced their concerns about AI and its threat to their careers, but “Flow” embodies a future of animation that maintains human interest and a drive for artistic innovation.
“AI animation has been a huge topic in the art community recently, and though I feel a bit intimidated by its evolution over the past couple of years, I’m not completely sure it can replace people in the industry. Smaller companies will use AI to help them, but when it comes to bigger studios, they still heavily require skills that AI can’t replicate,” Yee said.
Technology has transformed animation, and Yee agrees that movies like “Flow” are a step in the right direction to using the most out of the medium without losing the humanity of animated storytelling.
“With the winning result in the animation category, it makes me feel a lot better that people are still strongly acknowledging films that people put their heart and souls into rather than films that just use a computer to help generate it for convenience,” Yee said.
“Flow” doesn’t follow a traditional film structure like Pixar or Disney, nor does it rely on dialogue-driven humor, as it is entirely dialogue-free. Its only characters are a cat, a capybara, a bird, a lemur, and a whale, but even with these characters, fans like Julia Kenn and Emily McCarthy report the emotional rollercoaster the film put them through.
“‘Flow’ is beautiful, and it doesn’t feel like anything else that’s out right now. Attention spans have dropped so much in the past decade, so it’s crazy that a dialogue-free and somber movie about a cat was the first indie film to win the Animated Feature Oscar,” McCarthy said.
Even as a casual animation fan, McCarthy fell in love with the painterly look of the whole film.
As young animators look towards award-winning new films like “Flow,” O’Brien offers advice to young animators entering the industry.
“Go for it. Try things. Break things. Find out what you don’t like. Figure out what you do like,” O’Brien said. “Struggle with your vision and your execution. Get inspired by what someone else did. Get mad about not being able to do everything you want– then try again. Keep going. It gets better, sometimes not easier.”
