A Conversation with Gints Zilbalodis (FLOW)

The new animated film Flow, from Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis (Away), follows the adventures and misadventures of a group of animals trying to survive during an epic global flood. Set against a backdrop of deserted ancient cities, the movie features a cat in the lead role, supported by a capybara, lemur, Labrador retriever, and secretary bird. Gorgeously illustrated, with a stirring score, Flow (which I also reviewed) offers a fully engaging tale of survival and cooperation, a perfect metaphor for the obstacles and opportunities faced by our own species. I had a chance to talk to Zilbalodis by Zoom not long ago, and here is that conversation, edited for length and clarity. Zilbalodis’ English is quite fluent, though where I have needed to alter his answers to better fit American idioms, I have done so.

 Hammer to Nail: So I haven’t seen your first feature, Away, but I understand that, like Flow, it has no dialogue. Is this a form of storytelling towards which you gravitate?

Gints Zilbalodis: I guess all the films I’ve done are without dialogue. I’ve been asked if it’s a big challenge doing that, but actually I think for me it’s easier. Using dialogue would be a greater challenge, but that’s also something I would like to do sometime. But for now, I feel more comfortable expressing myself visually. When there’s no dialogue, I have more freedom in other ways. I can be more expressive with the sound and music and camera movement and lighting, and I feel like then it becomes more emotional, as well. It’s more like music, I guess. It’s about creating that experience rather than telling a simple message. It’s about transporting this into some other place and creating that sense that you are experiencing these things, and not just telling you the story with words, but also forcing me to think about new ways of doing this. I think I can come up with something more original or I’m forced to come up with something more original. I can’t just explain what the characters are feeling. I have to use the environment and use, in this case, the water, which helps us to convey the cat’s emotions. And those are my favorite scenes in films, where there isn’t a lot of talking, and those are the ones I remember the most.

 HtN: It also helps the film travel internationally if there’s no dialogue to dub or subtitle.

 GZ: This is probably the most widely distributed Latvian film, and I think the lack of dialogue helps with that.

 HtN: I’m sure. It’s like in the old silent days where all you had to do was swap out a few title cards on films and they would travel easily. So, what inspired you to tell this story of a ragtag group of animals brought together by a flood of biblical proportions?

 GZ: Well, I wanted to tell a personal story about my experience of figuring out how to work with others because I used to work by myself. This is the first project where I’m working with a big team and a proper budget. I had some anxieties about doing that, and I thought it would be a good idea for a story to express these feelings, which are still very fresh in my mind. It’s like you’re told to write what you know, but this isn’t about something that happened to me a long time ago. This is what I was going through while  actually making the film. So it’s very fresh for me, and I thought the cat would be a great character to convey this idea because it could go on this character arc where it starts out being very independent and learns to open up and to work together with others.

A shot from FLOW

I wanted to tell the story without dialogue, and having these animals act like animals allowed me to do that. So at no point did I ever consider having any human characters in the film because then they would need to speak and that would kind of break this concept. But I did want to leave some clues about what might have happened to the humans and let the audience try to figure it out themselves by watching the environment. And so there are multiple layers of storytelling. There’s the journey that the characters go through, and then you can try and piece together the history of this world or what happened to the humans. But that wasn’t the most interesting part for me. I’m fine if people don’t think about it or catch it on the first watch, but if they decide to watch it again, there’s something in the film that will offer a different experience and they can look for different stories in the background, as well.

 HtN: I’ll have to watch it again, then. But speaking of these clues that you leave, the physical landscapes of your movie defy easy categorization. They look ancient and the cities look possibly Indian or Central Asian. How did you construct them and choose that look?

 GZ: Well, I wanted this world to feel kind of timeless so that it could basically be set at any time, and hopefully that will make it feel fresher in the future, as well. We don’t see any modern-day buildings or skyscrapers or cell phones. Being able to make our own world allowed me to have more freedom with what kinds of places we were able to build. All that is part of the storytelling. It’s not just decoration. It helps us to understand these characters. I start with the character and then build everything around that. I wanted it to also feel warm and pleasant because I spend so much time working on films like this. So when I spend five years in this world, in this case, I want to enjoy being there.

 HtN: I understand. How did you decide on which animals to bring together. There’s the lemur and the capybara, the cat, the Labrador retriever, and the secretary bird. How did you choose those animals?

 GZ: It all started with the cat. It was the story about a cat who overcomes its fears of water. I thought that would be universally quite understandable, that cats don’t like water. But then to see it overcome those fears would also be quite exhilarating. And we can use the movement and the motion and just the cat being in water, which is an evocative image. I really relate to the cat in this film. I feel like my personality is kind of like that, as well, wanting to do things my own way. But I also had not just cats, but dogs, growing up. And so the dog is also inspired by two dogs I had. And I wanted that character to be the opposite of the cat and actually learn to be more independent throughout the story, to kind of show that there are positives and negatives to both of these ideas. And maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle.

I also knew that there should be this bird and it needed to be big enough to be able to carry the cat. There are not many birds who could do that. And so I discovered this secretary bird, which also was great in terms of its presence and kind of majesty. And we needed this cat to feel like it doesn’t trust anyone in the story, but the bird is the only one that it looks up to, and I thought this secretary bird had that kind of presence and that fit well with the lemur and the cat and the dogs.

We had to be more precise in how we portrayed the cat and dogs because we know them so well in real life. But with the lemur and some of the other characters, I think we had a little bit more freedom and we could push their personalities a little bit more. Although we still studied real animals for every moment. But all these animals are looking for the same thing. They’re looking for a place where they belong and a group that accepts them, and they just have different ways of achieving this goal. And so the lemur wants basically the same thing as everyone else.

 But the only one that gets along with everyone is the capybara. And that’s almost like a stereotype, that capybaras are very friendly with everyone. I’ve seen images online that they’re even friendly with some predators. And so I thought it would be fun to show this. It’s almost like a running gag where there’s some great peril happening in the story, but the capybara is always peaceful and very zen. And I thought it would be funny but also could have a profound meaning, as well. And it’s about making sure that they’re distinctive enough from each other and the silhouettes are recognizable and voices are distinctive. So yeah, it was like a casting process, almost like figuring out the different chemistry between each of these characters.

HtN: That makes sense. I think they make a really interesting bunch. So, in addition to directing and writing the film, you co-wrote the music, working with another composer, Rihards Zalupe. How did you go about creating the music, which is its own very important aesthetic element in the film?

GZ: So, I didn’t study music and I still don’t play any instruments, and I only started doing this with my first feature, Away, but probably my favorite process of the whole filmmaking journey is making the music, because relative to animation, it’s so fast and emotional; you can achieve an emotional effect in a few hours. With animation, it takes weeks or months. And so I write the music while I’m still writing the script, which is also why I want to do it myself, because it helps me to get ideas for the story, not just the atmosphere in the temple, but even some plot development and the decisions that the characters make. And so I write these sketches of the music and I write a lot more than ends up being used. It’s like a library I can pick and choose from and I can pick the best ones. I edit the film in pre-production, using my own music instead of using temp scores from other films. I think this allows me to integrate the music much more deeply into the film. It feels more specific to the moment and maybe less generic than if you would try to use a temp score and repeat something that’s already been done.

But in the end, we actually did record with an orchestra, a full orchestra with strings and a lot of solo instruments and percussion. And that’s where Rihards came on board. He would take these initial sketches I had written and add a lot more detail and layers of depth to them. He’s very experienced; much more experienced than me. He also started out as a percussionist, which is great because I used a lot of percussion instruments—melodic percussion instruments—which I thought could convey this sense of innocence and of playfulness in the characters. They’re also quite expressive, as well. We also used some electronic instruments and what doesn’t seem like the obvious decision is that the more emotional scenes are driven by the electronic instruments rather than the acoustic ones. But that felt kind of right to us, and I wanted the score to have room to explore these things.

There are certain sequences where it’s just the music without sound effects. And sometimes, in animated films, the music changes rapidly and tells you exactly how to feel, but I wanted more to just guide the audience and be a little bit ambiguous. This also allowed us to be more emotional and also have enough room for sound effects. This was important because there are certain scenes with no music, where it’s just the sounds for sometimes five minutes, which is quite rare in animation, where music often spoon-feeds the information to the audience. And I wanted to trust the audience that they will figure out the intention and the meaning without having the music constantly telling you exactly how to feel. I thought the sound designer would be excited to have this opportunity, but he actually said that he felt a lot of pressure because he couldn’t hide behind the dialogue or the music, and he had to be able to carry everything for a pretty prolonged period. But I think he really did an amazing job doing that.

HtN: I completely agree. Well, thank you so much for talking to me and for making the film.

 GZ: Thank you!

– Christopher Llewellyn Reed (@ChrisReedFilm)

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