Anthropomorphic animals have dominated animated film ever since Steamboat Willie first spun his ship’s wheel in 1928. What is more rare, however, are cartoon animals who simply act like animals. The cat in Flow doesn’t crack jokes, walk on two legs or do anything else from the Disney playbook. Yet its journey through a post-apocalyptic floodscape is one of the most engrossing, affecting and impressive cinematic expeditions you’re likely to see this year. 

Winner of four awards at this year’s Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Flow is told entirely without dialogue. It depicts a world in which a giant flood has submerged the earth and all humans have vanished. Our guide through this changed landscape is a small cat, threading its way through this new reality and encountering other animals. Suitable for children as well as adults, this captivating new animation is something truly novel in the genre, as well as a heart-wrenching tale of survival. 

 A movie brimming with sentiment but not sentimentality, this is one of the most moving animated films in recent memory, and, beyond that, groundbreaking too – Christian Blauvelt, Indiewire