This year’s Academy Awards ceremony was particularly special for a small country in the northeast of Europe, with a population of just under 2 million people. The Oscar for “Best Animated Feature” was awarded to a Latvian film called Flow!

Although it won the award for Latvia, this film is a collaboration between artists from Latvia, France, and Belgium. The story follows a black cat's adventures in a world that is increasingly flooding, and it must team up with various animals to survive the disaster. There is no dialogue, and all animal sounds were recorded using real animals. The film took five years to complete.

What makes this production unprecedented is its small budget - the team behind Flow worked with just $3.5 million, a tiny fraction compared to the budgets of previous Oscar-winning animated films. 

For comparison, the previous winners were Miyazaki’s “The Boy and The Heron” at $70 million, and Del Toro’s “Pinnochio” at $35 million. Not a small difference! 

Del Toro himself commented on the achievement, saying, “Flow outlines a possible future and a path for artist-led animation full of scale and ambition.”

Hopefully, this win will inspire other small teams and show that with belief in your ideas and hard work, you can achieve great things.

Without spoiling the plot, I encourage you to see it for yourself! The premiere in Japan will take place on March 14th, 2025, in major cinemas. For more information, you can visit the website.