According to Guillermo del Toro, this film represents the future of animation

Flow was presented at Un Certain Regard, this year in Cannes, and will also be on display in Annecy in June.

While the Cannes festivities ended this Sunday, with the consecration ofAnora of Sean Baker, it is time to take stock of this 77th edition of the Cannes Film Festival. Obviously, it is the films in the official competition that generate the most ink: Megalopolis, Love phew, Emilia Pérez, The Substance, Kinds of Kindness, The Seed of the Sacred Fig…

However, competitors from the parallel selections have also managed to attract attention. This is the case of Guillermo del Torowho took to his Twitter account to applaud the animation work done on Flowpresented this year under the banner Un Certain Regard.

“If I could make one wish for the future of animation, these images would be the beautiful and breathtaking beginning of it,” writes the director in the caption of his repost from the film's trailer, originally published by its director.

And indeed, this trailer reveals a film full of sounds, but without any words, where the work of the image stands out.

Directed by Gints Zilbalodis, Flow is a co-production between Latvia, France and Belgium, which tells the adventures of a “cat (who) wakes up in a universe invaded by water where all human life seems to have disappeared. He finds refuge on a boat with a group of other animals. But getting along with them proves to be an even bigger challenge than overcoming your fear of water! Everyone will now have to learn to overcome their differences and adapt to the new world that is imposed on them.” The genesis myth of Noah's ark, but seen from the height of animals, in short.

Late addition to this selection which, each year, highlights more original nuggets of international independent cinema, Flow leaves empty-handed from his trip to Cannes. The selection jury, made up of Maïmouna Doucouré, Asmae el Moudir, Vicky Krieps And Todd McCarthy and chaired by Xavier Dolanpreferred the Black Dog of Guan Hu. But that was without counting the help of del Toro, whose repost has already attracted more than 450,000 Internet users.

Besides, Guillermo del Toro knows what he's talking about. The Mexican director is a regular at animation studios, which he himself visited for his version of Pinocchio, winner of the BAFTA, Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Animated Film in 2023; and, to a lesser extent, for Pan's Labyrinth And Pacific Rim. It will be noted in passing that the sentence “animation is not a genre, it’s a medium”constitutes his biography on the X network.

A technique that the filmmaker practices and appreciates, therefore, and which he will perhaps have the opportunity to incorporate into his Frankensteincurrently in production and planned for 2025. This project will bring together, among other things, Jacob Elordi, Oscar Isaac, Christopher Waltz And Mia Goth.

In addition, it is important to note that the film's festival journey does not end there, since it was also selected in the official competition of the Annecy International Animation Festival, which will be held from June 9 to 15 next. Will the Annecy Jury be able to detect the revolutionary accent that Guillermo del Toro finds in him?

Flow doesn't have a release date yet, but here's a first look: