I like to watch the “Criterion Closet Picks” videos on YouTube. If you’ve never seen them: people from the film world, be they directors, actors or whatever, get invited into the Criterion closet, which is a closet full of DVDs and Blu-rays, and they get to pick and choose films they like. As long as they talk about them for a bit as well.

So I just finished watching the one where director Gints Zilbalodis from Latvia picks a number of films. Normally I may make a few notes with regards to the films that get chosen, but this time, it was the director himself who seemed such a great guy that I became curious about his films. The write-up said he had just made ‘Flow’ so off I went to the IMDb website.

Turns out Flow is an animated film, in a style which seems highly original, judging by the trailer. I’m not much of a fan of animated films, to be honest, but this one seems an absolute gem, about a cat (it helps if you’re a cat lover I suppose!) who has to survive in a drowned out world without human beings. Amazingly, there’s no dialogue and all the animals have real-life “voices”, which involved trips to the zoo to get recordings of some rarer species! It’s an almost biblical theme, but then without humans.

Premiering at Cannes earlier this year and winning awards in Annecy, it has since been submitted by Latvia for the Best International Feature Film category of the 2025 Academy Awards. The IMDb score of 7.9 underwrites the quality of this film.

It is out this month (December 2024), so definitely one to seek out. It’s a u-rated film, so why not try and make it a Christmas outing with the whole family!

Adrian

The Passion of Anna, Ingmar Bergman’s film of 1969, is not everyone’s favourite. Some like it a bit, most don’t like it all. The odd interludes with the actors talking about their roles feel experimental and out of place. Jarring even. And yet, having just seen it again after a long while, I must admit it’s growing on me. Especially after having heard some interesting information about it.

Liv Ullmann, who plays Anna, said in an interview that the English title is misleading. The film’s original title is En Passion (A Passion). No mention of Anna at all. And that piece of information may be the key to one’s liking the film better. It is NOT about Anna, but about the complete – both mental and in the end even literal – disintegration of a man.

Another interesting fact is that that same Liv Ullmann said that Ingmar Bergman basically spent his days filming his own life. His oeuvre reads like an autobiography. This particular film was written and shot while Ingmar Bergman’s relationship with Liv Ullmann was falling apart. Is the main character – Andreas Winkelman – really just another version of Ingmar himself? The film does seem to capture the strangling emotions of a relational breakdown perfectly.

It’s funny how those two small pieces of information will make one look at this film in a different light. So do me a favour, and try and watch it again. I’m hopeful you’ll be duly impressed with its emotional depth and Bergman’s talent. May those final shots of the film stay with you for a long, long time, because they’re beautiful!

Adrian