Gints Zilbalodis’ Debut Feature ‘Away’ Returns To U.K. And Irish Cinemas In March
While Gints Zilbalodis and his production team are celebrating two Academy Award nominations for their Golden-Globe-winning animated feature Flow, Munro Films has announced that Zilbalodis’ first, solo-animated feature Away is returning to U.K. and Irish cinemas on March 14.
Six years ago, Cartoon Brew reported on the making of Away, coinciding with the film’s debut at Animfest and Annecy. It is easy to see creative similarities today between Away and Flow. Visually, Zilbalodis’ first feature is creative kissing cousin of Flow’s unique Blender-animated production design. Away shares a similar delicate and luminous graphic style, albeit rendered in Autodesk’s Maya, and a handheld-camera feel that Zilbalodis achieved via Maya’s Viewport as playblast animation.
Away’s minimalist story, about a boy stranded after an airplane crash, is, like Flow, non-verbal and somewhat abstract with a science fiction vibe described as “part dream, part reality.” And, like Flow, the production of Away paralleled the filmmaker’s journey, which today’s press release also notes “explores our common, universal need to find a connection.”
Flow itself will be released in U.K. cinemas on March 21, via Curzon’s Artificial Eye label.
For Away’s theatrical return, its slender running time of 75 minutes will be accompanied by Izzy Livesey’s three-minute animated short The Lab (2024). Livesy created her amusing and beautifully-rendered short as her final major project at Bournemouth University’s National Centre for Computer Animation program, in collaboration with Kitty Smith, Shelly Ferrerosa Alves, and Livvy Cook.
