UPDATE 3 May 2024: For the first time ever, the Cannes Film Festival has selected a Latvian animated feature in one of its official competition programmes. This year, Gints Zilbalodis’s sophomore feature, Flow, will world-premiere in the Un Certain Regard section of the French gathering (see the news). Previously, only one Latvian feature had been screened in the same section - namely, Laila Pakalniņa’s The Shoe in 1998. After Cannes, Zilbalodis’s effort will head to Annecy, the world’s largest festival celebrating animated cinema, running from 9-15 June (see the news).

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Young Latvian helmer Gints Zilbalodis’s sophomore 3D animated feature, Flow, is in the works. The 29-year-old director is best known for his Annecy Contrechamp winner Away [+lee también:
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ficha de la película] (2019), an animated feature that he made all by himself after creating several shorts. Zilbalodis’s debut feature revolved around a boy and a little bird embarking on a journey across a strange island and trying to get back home.

The new picture, previously pitched at last year’s edition of Cartoon Movie (see the news), is penned by the director himself along with Matīss Kaža (Neon Spring [+lee también:
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ficha de la película]). The synopsis reads as follows: “After a terrible flood wreaks havoc on the world, a stubbornly independent Cat is forced to share a small boat with a group of other animals. Getting along with them turns out to be an even greater challenge for him than surviving the flood.”

Flow is being produced by Kaža and Zilbalodis for Latvia’s Dream Well Studio, Dyens for France’s Sacrebleu Productions and Gregory Zalcman (The Island [+lee también:
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The project, backed by the National Film Centre of Latvia, also received the support of the State Culture Capital Foundation of Latvia, France’s CNC, Arte, Belgium’s RTBF, the Belgian Tax Shelter and Eurimages. The Strasbourg-based body in particular handed out a generous €400,000 bursary, one of the highest ever granted to a Latvian-led production.

The release is tentatively slated for 2024.