2025 Oscars: Latvia Selects Annecy Award-winning ‘Flow’ for International Feature Oscar Submission

Latvia has selected Gints Zilbalodis’ award-winning animated film Flow as the country’s official entry for the 97th Academy Awards for the Best International Feature Oscar.

The film received high praise from Guillermo Del Toro following its world premiere at Cannes in Un Certain Regard and went on to win four prizes at Annecy in June, including the Gan Foundation Award for Distribution, the Audience Award and the Jury Award, as well as the special prize for best original music, and will screen at the Toronto International Film Festival next month.

The film, written and directed by Zilbalodis, tell a story through realms natural and mystical as it follows a courageous cat after his home is devastated by a great flood. Teaming up with a capybara, a lemur, a bird, and a dog to navigate a boat in search of dry land, they must rely on trust, courage, and wits to survive the perils of a newly aquatic planet. Flow is co-written by Matiss Kaza, with a score by Zilbalodis and Rihards Zalupe It is produced by Zilbalodis and Kaza, alongside Ron Dyens and Gregory Zalcman.

The Latvian Selection Committee, a commission of film industry experts, established by the National Film Center. It is the country’s 16th official Oscar submission although they have yet to be nominated. Sideshow and Janus Films acquired North American rights to the film out of Cannes and will release the film theatrically later this year.

The updated list of official submissions for the International Feature Film Oscar can be found here.

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Critics Choice Association (CCA), San Francisco Bay Area Film Critics Circle (SFBAFCC) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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