While it’s long been reported that black cats have trouble getting adopted from shelters because of their (incorrect) association with bad luck, the Oscar-winning film Flow is helping to change that in Brazil.
Released in 2024, the animated Latvian film Flow follows the journey of a black cat who must learn to work together with other animals to survive a devastating flood. Upon its release, the film, which features no verbal dialogue, garnered rave reviews–film critic Carlo Aguilar gave the film four stars and wrote that it “shimmers with the essence of life and the spirit of selfless cooperation.
Its narrative clarity makes its fable seem timeless, while innovating and expanding the visual immersion of its medium.” The film became Latvia’s entry into the Oscars’ Best International Feature Film and Best Animated Film categories, and ultimately won the latter. It also won Best Animated Film at the Golden Globe, Independent Spirit, and National Board of Review Awards, among many others, some 50 in total.
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But with a lead cat that’s “a noble character you can’t help but root for. Purring, scratching and scrabbling up walls, this cat virtually leaps off the screen,” as The New York Timesshared, Flow created not just a warm reception amongst critics, but amongst fans.
As Brazilian newspaper Metrópoles reported, Brazil’s Ampara Animal Institute, an non-governmental organization specializing in animal protection and defense, said “What not everyone realizes is the real impact it [the film] has had: increasing interest in adopting black cats, which have faced prejudice for so long.” Flow has created a demand for black cats, the newspaper reports, and people are even referencing the film–saying “Flow-type cats” instead of “black cats,” for example–when sharing there are some friendly felines up for adoption.
One of the reasons people may have been so drawn to Flow’s star is because of the way it was animated. While real animals inspired the characters’ movements, it was also their deliberate lack of detail that made them so adored by moviegoers. “I think if you had too much detail to the characters, they can lose their appeal and be less expressive,” the film’s director Gints Zilbalodis told entertainment news site Polygon. “If you don’t add too much detail to the characters, I think the audience can kind of project their own experiences on these gaps, and see their own cat within this character. It’s not just a cat from the film, but it’s their own cat. It makes it more intense and engaging.”
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The film has also left its pawprints on Latvia’s heart–there’s now a mural of the beloved cat at the film’s heart that’s been painted in Latvia’s capital city, Riga. There, as Polish and Central European news network TVPWorld writes, there hasn’t been a rush of black cat adoptions, but local shelters find that to be good news. “They point out that previous films like Lassie, 101 Dalmatians, and Snow Dogs led to surges in dog adoptions, but many were later abandoned as owners struggled to care for them,” TVP World wrote. But with a local mural hailing one of Latvia’s newest heroes in the form of a black cat, these feline friends now have a more permanent space in the local culture, so shelter cats’ new homes may not be too far off. Indeed, it was even news that Zilbalodis himself found delightful, resharing it on his ownX account. Zilbalodis also regularly shares fan artwork and memes dedicated to the film’s black cat star.
Here’s hoping for a future where black cats, or Flow cats, find the homes they need with families that love and adore them. They’ve clearly been good luck all along.
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