Flow
Straume

This Latvian animated adventure fantasy centers on a small black cat displaced by a great, unexpected flood. The feline protagonist finds refuge on a free-floating boat along with some other animal friends. Though they often work at cross purposes, the odd inter-species crew navigates the challenges of adapting to their radically transformed world. Since none of these animals speak, the movie only requires a bit of anthropomorphizing. I very much liked the film's depiction of dogs as dumb and mostly useless annoyances for the kitty, except on the few occasions when their size comes in handy. The film is rendered on the open-source software Blender, which gives it a different look than what we normally find on the big screen. It's visually interesting, but while the fake handheld approach is appropriate for this low-to-the-ground, cat 's-eye perspective, it wore out its welcome quickly, and it made me glad that live-action movies about cats, like Kedi, have not adopted this approach.