Last Updated on March 10, 2025 by Sangita Ekka
Gints Zilbalodis has achieved the impressive feat of capturing an Academy Award while competing with global animation giants.
For the third year in a row (as reported by many publications), a familiar, Western household animation studio lost the Oscar battle. And while winning an Oscar is not the only indication of a well-made film, it offers a huge boost to indie animators and people wanting to make movies using their laptops and Blender-like open-source tools.
Flow is a trophy in Latvian animation history, and the country welcomed its heroes upon arrival. And while we congratulate the well-deserved win, let’s go away in history and closely inspect the evolution of their success.
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What happens in the movie Away?
A relatively unfamiliar name, Away is a feature-length film released in 2019 by the director of Flow, Gints Zilbalodis, a Latvian animator.
Shortly after the Oscar win, he shared a Twitter thread about his journey making Away. Starting at the tender age of 20 and with no formal education in filmmaking, it took him four years to complete it, including some music tracks he made on a phone. The film was rendered on Blender and Maya.
In the same Twitter thread, Gints briefly describes his creation.
Quoting verbatim:
“Away is about a boy alone on an island, trying to escape a dark spirit and looking for ways to reconnect with society. There are parallels to how I made the film alone. Flow continues this theme as we follow a very independent cat who has to learn how to work together with others.”
In a broader context, the film is categorized under “Fantasy” and “Adventure” and starts with a young man lost on an island. There is no information about how he arrived on an unfamiliar, unearthly-looking landscape or the presence of an unfriendly giant.
Watching Flow is analogous to a friend playing a video game and choosing an adventure for the character.
Narrated in four parts – Forbidden Oasis, Mirror Lake, Dream Well, and Cloud Harbor- Away carries the element of short films produced before it and yet offers a cohesive storyline.
Previous works of Gints Zilbalodis
Gints Zilbalodis’s older works are available on his YouTube channel.
His short films – Aqua and Priorities have similar themes as Flow and Away, respectively. His films can be broadly classified into two categories – one that captures the stories that can happen in cities, like Followers, and another that is fantastical and adventurous.
Aqua, Priorities, and Oasis fall under the latter. It is worth noting that Oasis, which was released in 2017, is extremely similar to the first chapter of Away – Forbidden Oasis, and IMDB stills tell us that the visuals are not too different either.
Reading the mind of an artist
The theme of escapism remains consistent throughout Glints’s creations. He often works with limited human characters and removes them entirely in Flow.
In his fantasy/adventure short films, there’s a primary human character with an animal or bird as a companion. Other human characters are represented through signs and silhouettes, a contrast to his other film category.
Each film seems like an experiment, like a craft that could be perfected in the next sprint. Oasis and Priorities set the groundwork for the feature-length project – Away in terms of character building, landscaping, music, and the overall story.
Final Thoughts
Gints Zilbalodis created multiple short films before bagging the Oscar home. His films are silent and yet emotionally appealing. The music fills the conversation gap, and overall, his films are engaging.
Watching Away as his first film also gave me other messages. It could be hard to take the first step out of one’s cave, but it’s a necessary action; companionship comes in all shapes and sizes, and there’s an adventure waiting for you to happen.
Glints’s win is an inspiration for upcoming filmmakers who may feel restricted by a lack of access to resources, tools, money, or connections. Good films can also be made in artists’ bedrooms and small studios.
May this tribe grow!
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