On the night of March 3, the 97th Academy Awards were presented in Hollywood.
This year, the eyes of the Latvian public were also on the event, following how the animated film Flow by director Gints Zilbalodis fared at the ceremony - the first Latvian film to be nominated for the movie world's best-known awards, LTV reports.

Flow was nominated for an Academy Award in the categories of Best International Feature Film and Best Animated Feature Film. In the event it lost out to Brazilian movie I'm Still Here in the Best International Feature Film category but triumphed in the Best Animated Feature Film category.

Director Gints Zilbalodis' said: "It will take some time to process. It's a crazy thing that happened and I couldn't have done this without all the help from everyone here."

Flow (Straume in Latvian), tells the dialog-free tale of a group of animals banding together to survive a great flood and has already garnered a clutch of international awards at film festivals. You can read our review of the film from last year here.

The news was received with glee in Latvia, and Monday morning's national news (was already reporting on the achievement at length while congratulations poured in from officials, film industry professionals and the film's many fans in the general public.

While Flow's achievement is remarkable in its own right, it is also likely to spark increased international interest in Latvian films in general and Latvian animation in particular. It will be interesting to see if coming months and years produce a 'Flow effect' that may stimulate the Latvian and perhaps wider Baltic film production industries.