Oscar nominee Gints Zilbalodis on the allure of capybaras, casting his sound editor’s cat, and including human voice actors in his next movie. Photo: Courtesy of DreamWell Studio
Maybe the key to making a beloved movie is to tickle a few large rodents along the way. Working on the animated film Flow, Latvia’s first (and twice) Oscar-nominated movie, director Gints Zilbalodis and sound designer Gurwal Coïc-Gallas discovered how many strident animal noises clash with their respectively cute exteriors. “We used real animal voices in Flow. In most cases this wasn’t a problem, except for the capybara,” Zilbalodis explained in a post on X. “We made a creative decision to offer the role to a baby camel instead.”
How many other animal voice actors were recast along the way? Flow is a dialogue-less animated feature that follows a previously solitary cat who learns to coexist with others — specifically a golden retriever, a lemur, a secretary bird, and a capybara — in the wake of a massive flood. The movie premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2024 and finally reached U.S. shores in November. Since then, it’s become a critical darling (it’s joining the Criterion Collection later this year), with those who’d managed to see it in theaters or via digital rental flocking to Zilbalodis’s X account, which itself was flooded with behind-the-scenes details of how he and his team made the film over the course of five and half years.
“Wasn’t there a moment when you used a lemur’s breath for the cat?” Zilbalodis asked Coïc-Gallas when I called them up, just days before Flow was set to hit the streaming platform Max. (It’s finally available on February 14.) It seems that almost every animal besides the dog had a friend or two helping out with their lines, particularly when the performers proved less than co-operative (like Coïc-Gallas’s cat, who voices Flow’s feline lead), or unavailable due to scheduling or location issues (like humpback whales).
Tell me about recording animals at the Zoo.
Gurwal Coïc-Gallas: We went straight to the capybara enclosure, and the zookeeper told me to record the young male capybara because he had an incredible, strong voice. We started recording, but he was still very quiet, so the zookeeper tickled him. After a few minutes, we heard the first sound, which was absolutely ridiculous. I thought I was fooled because I really was expecting a big beautiful sound. So I asked for another capybara, but the guy told me it was the best I could get. Gints sent me a message to ask how it was with the capybara, and I told him it went great despite feeling nervous.
I really hoped it would work when you added the picture. When Gints arrived at my editing room, we watched the sequence and heard the crazy sound — Gints was very quiet because he’s very polite. I laughed and said we can’t use this and we have to look for another sound. The first idea was to look for a moose, but by chance, we found the sound of a baby camel. I don’t know where the sound comes from; I have a huge sound library, and this isn’t a sound I personally recorded. But it fits perfectly with the capybara.
Gints Zilbalodis: We also considered a llama at one point.
Gints, what was going through your head when you first heard the capybara sound and realized it wasn’t going to work?
G.Z.: Maybe we could manipulate the sound to change the pitch. Gurwal was very worried, but I figured there was something else we could use.
G.C.: We were very lucky because sometimes you can look for days and days for the right sound.
Did you get to pet the capybara at all? Who is tickling the capybara in the picture you shared with us?
G.C.: It was the zookeeper. Capybaras are really funny, and I really wanted to touch and play with them.
Did you know beforehand how much of a cult following capybaras have?
G.Z.: They were gaining popularity, so I think that’s why I noticed them. I had seen videos of capybaras being friends with every type of animal. It’s a very unpredictable and very anxious time in the world. People are looking to capybaras as a means to escape and find peace in their own lives.
G.C.: It’s a good representation of the positive feelings and enthusiasm for this movie around the world. I did a screening in Brazil, and over there, a capybara is as common as a dog. And the audience didn’t notice it wasn’t the right sound for a capybara and they live with them!
One of the pictures shows a lemur on your shoulder. How did that happen?
G.C.: You’ve never been in a zoo with lemurs? They are free to go everywhere, and they’re going to go on your shoulders and in your hair. They’re taking all the food you have. I stayed there the entire afternoon, running after the lemurs to record them. After the first hour, they got used to me so that’s when they started climbing on my shoulders. It made it very easy to record them.
The capybara, lemur, golden retriever, and cat. Photo: Janus Films
What did they sound like?
G.C.: The sound was great. Lemurs have only three sounds; they’re not really expressive, and in Flow our lemur is very talkative. I needed a lot of sounds from them. I had to create a language for the lemur, so we used sounds from a small monkey, too. What’s important is that we used real animals, and it’s not a human voice acting.
G.Z.: Wasn’t there a moment when you used a lemur’s breath for the cat? I think that’s why real animals are watching the film and paying attention to the screen. Maybe it’s the story, and they can relate, but more likely, the sound is interesting to them.
G.C.: The original sound for the bird was too scary, and the bird was already scary without the sound, so I looked for a different bird sound.
What animal sound do you think people are most surprised to hear in the film?
G.C.: For the breathing of the whale, I had to find another sound because I couldn’t record a real whale. It took almost two days listening to many animals, playing with the different speeds and pitches. Similar to the baby camel where I don’t know where it came from, I found a tiger. The tiger had a problem with its voice, or it was a very old tiger. It had a strange breathing sound, like it had asthma. I pitched the sound down to make it become the whale. We’ve done a lot of family screenings with Q&As, and we played a game where we asked what animal voices the whale. No one ever guessed it was a tiger. Magic of my job!
Were there other animals that were difficult to find the sounds for?
G.C.: The sequence where the cat was swimming with the fish was very difficult because I couldn’t find a sound for the fish. There’s no sound when a fish moves in the water. It was very easy to ask Gints to help me write a piece of music for this sequence. I thought I could just put some water sounds in, and it would be fine. But Gints said, “No, you have to find something.” So I put some compressed air in water and moved it around a microphone. It was mainly just air moving.
Gurwal, your cat was one of the voices for Flow, correct?
G.C.: Yes, my cat is famous, and she doesn’t realize it. I thought it would be easy to record the cat because my cat is very expressive. But when she saw the microphone, she stopped talking. For several days, I was following my cat around the house with my microphone trying to record her with no luck. I had the idea to hide the microphone near her food bowl, and I waited until she asked for food. I was able to record her for a bit before she realized the microphone was there. That was last summer and for two months, my cat didn’t talk, at least not near me. Three days ago, I tried recording her again just for fun, and there was no problem with her talking. She’s not afraid of the microphone anymore.
G.Z.: Why did you record your cat again?
G.C.: I was cleaning a closet with a lot of microphones, and there was an old microphone I wanted to try to see if I should keep it. I was home alone, and the only other person who was there was the cat. I followed her around with the microphone, and it worked.
Has your cat seen the movie?
G.C.: I tried on a big screen, and she watched the first five minutes, and then she walked away. You’ve seen on Instagram that there are a lot of animals watching the movie; it’s crazy.
There are so many pets and toddlers who are obsessed with Flow.
G.Z.: It’s really cool because I just tried to make a film I would like to see. I wasn’t trying to make it for a broad audience. I thought it would maybe be seen at a few festivals if we’re lucky. Somehow, it’s reached a really wide audience, and it works for kids as well as adults. We respect kids and didn’t want to over-explain anything. Sometimes, in kids’ films, they’re loud and fast with a lot of jokes, and you actually lose their attention. Kids are more engrossed in the quiet moments.
G.C.: I did a special screening with 200 kids, ages 8 to 10, who are not used to watching a movie like this. They were all very quiet during the screening, and during the Q&A I asked if it was a problem for them that the animals didn’t talk. One little girl said, “No, it’s good that they don’t talk because that way you understand them better.” It’s incredible how people are connected to animals.
What else surprised you about the audience for the film?
G.C.: Last month, I had an incredible experience where I went to jail.
G.Z.: Explain that you were just visiting the jail.
G.C.: Yes, just visiting. There was a screening of Flow in one of the biggest prisons near Paris. There were about 50 inmates watching and the woman organizing it told me that normally, they talk a lot during the screening because it’s a way for them to meet each other because they are alone in their cells. But they didn’t talk at all during the screening, and she was worried that everyone was sleeping but they were all connected to the movie.
Photo: Courtesy of DreamWell Studio
Talk to me about the film you’re currently working on.
G.Z.: Right now, I’m working on the music. For Flow we had eight and a half hours of music, and we only used about 15 minutes of it. I already have more than four hours for the next project, and I’m still going to write more. I need help from the music to understand the story. I’m also developing some visual materials before the script is even finished because that will also influence the story. I don’t want to finish the script and then figure out the visuals because they all have to work together. We’re going to do the film in our studio in Latvia. It’s the first film for me that will have dialogue, and that’s a new kind of challenge. I wanted to do something I’d never done before. I don’t want to make another film with cats — maybe later I could do that, but now I need to do something different. It’s a bit bigger than Flow, but not much bigger. I can’t really talk about the story, but it’s very personal to me, just like Flow is.
You mentioned dialogue, so will humans be talking in the film?
G.Z.: Mhm.
What do you take as inspiration when you’re working on this film, especially with the music?
G.Z.: The music for this next movie is different than in Flow; Flow was very playful and a lot of love. There’s also the sound of the flood, which is very dreadful. This next one is more dreamlike. I don’t know what’s inspiring me; I’m just playing with it. I don’t know where it would lead me. I always have to find my own way into it, and often, it’s just like a happy accident that I press the wrong button, and it sounds interesting.
What did you learn from Flow that you’re applying to this movie?
G.Z.: I’m trying to delegate more with each project. I did my first film by myself, and with Flow, I was quite involved. I’d like to focus more on the storytelling and the big picture and do less on the technical things. It’s just more important to get the idea as quickly as possible and not waste time and money on things that no one will see.
