‘Flow’ Director Gints Zilbalodis Returns To Latvia As A National Hero

Flow director Gints Zilbalodis received a hero’s welcome when he returned to his native Latvia yesterday after winning the country’s first-ever Academy Award.

A crowd awaited him and the film’s producer Matiss Kaza at the Riga Airport, and a choir was on hand to perform the country’s national anthem. Afterwards, he was given a police escort to the Freedom Monument in Riga’s city center for a late-night rally, where hundreds of people braved near-freezing temperatures to hear various speeches and music performances. City police estimated the crowd at around 500 people.

A summary of the festivities can be seen in the news report below, while a longer version of the event is available on the Latvian Public Media website.

Zilbalodis himself shared some snaps of the event here:

🇱🇻 pic.twitter.com/L4L8ADMYd2

— Gints Zilbalodis (@gintszilbalodis) March 6, 2025

As rare as it is for any animator to become famous, Flow’s success has turned Zilbalodis, 30, into a national hero across his native Latvia, which has a population of just 1.8 million people (one-fifth the amount of people living in L.A. County). The film, titled Straume in Latvian, recorded over 320,000 admissions in his home country, more than any other film in the last 30 years. When Zilbalodis won the Golden Globe in January, the statue was displayed in the Latvian National Museum of Art where it was viewed by nearly 16,000 people. And the film’s black cat has become something of a city mascot; a three-dimensional sculpture of it now sits atop the letters RIGA in what has become a photo spot near the Freedom Monument.

Latvia’s president Edgars Rinkēvičs not only congratulated Zilbalodis on his Oscar win but shared a photo of himself in front of the Flow sculpture:

Nenoturējos. Miau 🐈‍⬛

Ceļā uz @tv24_lv pulksten 9.30 par aktuālo Latvijā un pasaulē. pic.twitter.com/m3qd5NLuZn

— Edgars Rinkēvičs (@edgarsrinkevics) March 3, 2025

The film’s success is also a financial boon for the country’s animation industry, with the government newly allocating 1 million euros to fund animation projects. Additionally, Zilbalodis’ studio Dream Well was awarded 300,000 euros by the Cabinet of Ministers for winning the Golden Globe, and an additional 150,000 euros has been set aside for marketing Latvian animation internationally.

Besides Zilbalodis, the country hosts other well known animation filmmakers who stand to benefit from the government’s new enthusiasm for animation, including Vladimir Leschiov and Edmunds Jansons, not to mention numerous other Latvian animators who have gained recognition abroad, including Signe Baumane, Anete Melece, and Ilze Burkovska-Jacobsen.

Time will tell what kind of impact Zilbalodis’ international success will have on the country’s overall animation scene, but one thing is for certain: Flow has put Latvian animation on the map and created the country’s first animation celebrity.