Flow, a dreamy, dialogue-free tale of a cat in a post-apocalyptic landscape, scored best animated feature film at the 97th Academy Awards on Sunday, becoming the first Latvian film to win an Academy Award and sparking a wave of national pride.

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.