Flow causes huge upset at 2025 Golden Globes as Latvian indie movie beats Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 to win best animated film award

A Latvian movie has stunned Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 at the 2025 Golden Globes
Flow beat the Disney box office juggernauts to win this year’s best animated film award
The silent inside flick’s victory is all the more impressive due to its tiny production budget

A Latvian indie movie has stunned two Disney box office juggernauts to win the 2025 Golden Globes best animated film award.

Flow, an animated movie with no dialog that stars a black cat, pulled off the biggest shock of the night as it beat two of 2024’s most anticipated new movies, Inside Out 2 and Moana 2, to secure this year’s prize. The Disney-developed flicks were smash hits last year, with Inside Out 2 earning almost $1.7 billion globally and Moana 2 raking in (at the time of writing) $960 million worldwide. Despite their monstrous ticket tales and animated film award favorites tag after the 2025 Golden Globes nominees were revealed, though, neither sequel was able to defeat a relatively unknown flick whose own box-office haul – in the US, anyway – stands a comparatively meagre $6.8 million.

The Disney duo weren’t the only films that Flow beat to win the gong. Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, which recently made its debut on Netflix and currently holds a perfect 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, was also bested on the night. Vengeance Most Fowl‘s fellow claymation flick Memoir of a Snail and Universal’s gorgeous, painterly-style animated offering The Wild Robot, which hold 94% and 97% critics RT ratings, also lost out to Flow.

Directed by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis – he co-wrote the flick with Matiss Kaza – Flow tells the tale of Cat, a solitary animal whose home is destroyed by a great flood. After finding refuge on a boat filled with other animals, Cat soon realizes that, in order to survive and thrive, teamwork really makes the dream work. It seems, then, that its classic tale of unity and triumph over adversity, plus its wonderfully realized visuals, struck a chord with The Globes’ 300-plus-strong voting panel and helped it conquer its rivals.

A purr-fect night for independent animated filmmaking

Flow will hope to repeat its Golden Globes success if it’s nominated at this year’s BAFTAs and Oscars (Image credit: UFO Distribution)

Memoir of a Snail aside, Flow‘s victory is all the more impressive because of the competition it was up against. Not only did three of the aforementioned movies – Inside Out 2, Moana 2, and The Wild Robot – make it onto my 52 best movies of 2024 list, but they were also made by two of the biggest entertainment studios around in Disney and Universal. Flow wasn’t created by a household name, so it was already swimming against the tide ahead of the 2025 Golden Globes ceremony.

Each film’s relative production budgets proves how shocking Flow‘s win was, too. Inside Out 2, which is out now on Disney Plus, cost a reported $200 million to develop, while Moana 2 made a similarly big splash from a cost perspective with its apparent $150 million outlay. The Wild Robot‘s production cost of $78 million is modest by comparison, but it’s still a significant amount of money to spend on an original flick, especially when it’s held up against Flow‘s incredibly tiny budget. Indeed, the indie flick, which contains no dialog and was fully rendered in Blender, a free and open-source software program, cost just $4 million to make.

I’ll readily admit that Flow passed me by upon release in late 2024, but it’s clear that I’ve missed out on a beautiful and moving film. Thankfully, I can rectify my error of not seeing it in theaters when Flow makes the leap to digital platforms tomorrow (January 7). The Golden Globe winner will be available to rent or buy on Amazon, Apple TV, and many other online stores, but only in the US. So, if you’re Australian or, like me, a UK resident, you’ll need to make use one of the best VPN services around to watch it.