Deadline: April 11, 2025

It has hardly gone unnoticed that the Latvian feature animation Flow (Zilbalodis, 2024) stole the show and the winning prize for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards this year (Oscars, 2025), surpassing industry favourites from well-established studios, such as Inside Out 2 (Mann and Nielsen 2024) and Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl (Park and Crossingham, 2024).

The current enthusiastic response to the unexpected win by Flow (2024) stresses what Cartoon Brew (Amidi, 2025) describes as its ‘underdog’ status due to the fact that it has a young director, it has received full funding from Europe, it is wordless and that it was created on a much smaller budget compared to its competition.

Given the relatively recent release of the animated feature and therefore the limited amount of writings about it, in this issues, we are interested in exploring observations and analyses centered on aspects of Flow’s (2024) narrative, aesthetic, technical, socio-political and theoretical significance, with topics that may include, but are not limited to:

  • Audiences and film critics’ reactions to the animation.
  • Critical interpretations and analysis of the animations key themes, characters and environmental settings.
  • Discussion of the aesthetic and technical aspects of the animation.
  • Socio-political commentary to the animation and relevant related media.
  • Historical lineage to European production settings and culture.
Still image from Flow (2024) of the main character, the cat, and the other animal characters on their journey. Image uploaded online by Los Angeles Time.

We welcome posts that are:

  1. Between 600 and 900 words discussing any aspect of the above topics. 
  2. Forwarded as a MICROSOFT WORD document. 
  3. Include at least one image to visually support their argument/post.
    1. The images must be less than 2 MB in size per image and sent as individual files. 
    2. Please indicate where the images should be placed in the text, including image caption(s) and credits. All permissions are the responsibility of the contributor.
  4. Include a short bio of 100 words max.
  5. Include 3 keywords. 

Please contact co-editors Carmen Hannibal and Anastasiia Gushchina via blog@animationstudies.org with submissions and/or questions.