Flow' Director Gints Zilbalodis Hopes Latvia's Animated Feature Oscar Win Inspires "Independent Animation Filmmakers Around The World"

It is the longest period in the history of the Academy Awards that the film giant has gone without a golden statuette.

Also in the Best Animation Oscar category were 'Inside Out 2,' 'Memoir of a Snail,' 'Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl' and 'The Wild Robot'

LOS ANGELES (AP) — “Flow,″ a wordless cat parable, won the Oscar for animated feature at Sunday’s 97th Academy Awards. The win gives Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis his first Academy Award.

Flow' wins the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the first indie winner of this category since its inception at the 2002 ceremony where 'Shrek' won.

Gints Zilbalodis’s Latvian film Flow —- which won the Oscar for best animated film some hours back at the 97th Academy Awards — manages to hold your attention through its 85-minute runtime without a single dialogue.

The independent animated film 'Flow' by Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film, marking Latvia's first Academy Award. Rendered using Blender, the film stood out against bigger studio movies.

In a big win that underscored the growing prominence of indepedent animation, Gints Zibalodis’ “Flow,” the moving dialog-free tale of a solitary cat’s journey as it learns to survive after a great flood – that was made with open-source software Blender for just $3.

The wordless film follows animals forging an unlikely friendship as they fight to survive a natural disaster. But scary flood scenes and existential themes may be a bit much for the youngest viewers.