‘Flow,’ ‘Wander To Wonder’ Win Top Honors At Animation Is Film Festival

Flow, a low-budget edge-of-your-seat survival film by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis, has earned the top feature film prize at the seventh edition of Animation is Film (AIF), the L.A.-based animation festival organized by GKIDS, Annecy Int’l Animated Film Festival, and Variety.

Flow, which premiered at Cannes and went on to win more awards than any other film at Annecy this year, has emerged as a primary contender this awards season. Last month, it won the grand prize at Ottawa and earlier this month it was nominated for best animated feature by the European Film Awards. The film is set to open in Los Angeles and New York on November 22 through Sideshow and Janus Films, followed by a nationwide U.S. release on December 6.

The jury, which consisted of Kambole Campbell, Peter Debruge, Carolyn Giardina, Karen Ryan, and Drew Taylor, gave the following statement on why it selected Flow as the winner:

Without a word of dialogue, Gints Zilbalodis weaves sound, music and immersive animation to show how powerful the medium can be when coupled with the right story. Flow seriously considers how human actions are impacting the environment, and what effect that has on animals, centering their perspective in a way that only animation can.

Nina Gantz’s stop-motion short Wander to Wonder, a co-production from The Netherlands, France, Belgium, and United Kingdom, picked up Animation is Film’s Short Film Grand Jury Prize. The dark comedy film looks at the lives of three miniature actors in a kids’ tv series, who are left alone in a film studio after their creator dies. With their slowly decaying costumes and growing hunger, they continue to make increasingly strange episodes for their fans.

Wander to Wonder premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2023, and has gone on to win a bounty of honors including grand prizes at SXSW, Valladolid, Cardiff, and Anima Brussels.

The shorts jury, made up of Tom Caulfield, Nic West, and Ramin Zahed, said of the film: “Bonkers in the best way possible, Nina Gantz’s profound meditation on grief won this jury over with its unique visual style and sense of hope.”

The audience award was a tie between Adam Elliot’s stop-mo feature Memoir of a Snail, which just won the top prize at the BFI London Film Festival, and Naoko Yamada’s latest feature The Colors Within.

Here is the complete list of winners from the festival:

2024 Animation is Film Winners

Grand Jury Prize

• Flow (Gints Zilbalodis)

Special Jury Prize

• Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot)

Audience Award (tie)

• Memoir of a Snail (Adam Elliot)
• The Colors Within (Naoko Yamada)

Short Film Grand Jury Prize

• Wander to Wonder (Nina Gantz)

Short Film Special Jury Prize

• A Crab in the Pool (Jean-Sebastien Hamel, Alexandra Myotte)