In Retrospect: Young Critics at the Earth Rising Festival 2025

Éiru (2025) and Flow (2024)

Reviewed by Iveta Rusinova

This September, for a fifth year in a row, IMMA has once again become the home for the Earth Rising Festival that through its workshops, installations and screenings seeks to blend art, ecology and climate change awareness, encouraging collective action to the climate crisis.

The theme of the festival this year is “Making Kin”, inspired by Donna Haraway’s book and explored in the museum’s current group exhibition “Staying with the Trouble” that emphasises on the fact that living in an age of ecological breakdown, the answer lies not in avoidance or severance, but rather in togetherness.

This is precisely why the picks for the screenings on Day 2 work as a great addition to the programme. Taking place outdoors, screened on IMMA’s Living Canvas presented by IPUT Real Estate, the sunny Saturday afternoon saw lots of families gathering around the chairs, scattered in the front yard. The choices for that evening were Cartoon Saloon’s short film Éiru, followed by this year’s Oscar winner for Best Animated Feature Flow, screened in collaboration with the Dublin International Film Festival. The screenings were eventually moved indoors to IMMA’s cozy lecture room that came not as a disappointing change, but as a rather welcomed shelter from the piercing wind.

The opening of the screening was with a speech, delivered by Melanie Lynch - executive producer and story consultant for the Cartoon Saloon’s Éiru. She asked the audience how many people were aware that Ireland was named after a goddess, to which there were only a few heads nodding in response. That proves even further how important Lynch’s cause is today, considering back in 2016 she founded the Herstory storytelling movement that puts the spotlight on female-led stories no matter modern, historical or mythical.

In the same line of thought, Éiru directed by Giovanna Ferrari, focuses on little, yet fierce Éiru who is the smallest in her Iron-Age clan. Her one desire is to be a strong warrior like the rest of her folk and to be taken seriously. Until one day the water from the village’s well disappears with no trace and Éiru’s one insecurity becomes her biggest asset as she is the only small enough to descend to the heart of the earth and bring the water back to her people. Drawn in Cartoon Saloon’s usual 2D style, the vividness of the character’s designs and the ethnic music make it a very immersive experience that enchants you from the start and doesn’t let you off the hook till the very end. Without spoiling the ending, it does perfectly fit the theme of putting aside differences for the greater good.

Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow was revolutionary this year in several aspects, one of them being bringing the first Oscar to Latvia as well as keeping the streak of Disney’s loss alive as 2025 became the third consecutive year in which the studio lost the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. A film’s value or influence is certainly not to be judged solely by its award recognition, but it’s definitely an implication of this welcomed change clearly illustrating the audience’s hunger for new, creative voices and an Academy Award can certainty give the studio heads the hint and reassurance to back up more experimental projects, especially in an industry, dominated by a handful of major players, like animation.

Flow is not only exceptional for its award achievements, but also technically since it was fully created on a free software, further proving it’s not that much the assets and tools that matter, but the mind and intention behind it. The dialogue-free story follows the journey of a solitary black cat in this post-apocalyptic world where mankind’s existence is diminished to merely hollow city ruins, abandoned houses, random household possessions and large scale statues. When an ark-worthy flood submerges its home, the initially seemingly self-sufficient cat must seek refuge on a boat shared with a mixed crew of animals (including a dog, a capybara, a lemur, and a secretary bird), who are to endure many challenges that gradually makes them come along.

There’s no other film where its message is as straight forward as here and that being ‘we’re all in the same boat’. The absence of dialogue is essential for portraying that lack of communication doesn’t necessarily mean lack of understanding and both connection and empathy come from actions. It’s refreshing to see how nature is designed so vibrantly with rich, deep colours and seems to be flourishing in contrast to how post-apocalyptic worlds are usually portrayed. They’re often bleak, dreadful and achromic, implying the world ends with humanity. But in fact the ending of something is always a new beginning and Flow doesn’t shy away from enlightening that the void left from humankind is not to be filled, but to leave space for the rejuvenation of nature, because there’s no denying we’re the problem.

Every human, to some extent, has traits seen in all the passengers in that boat - the indifference of the capybara, the materialism of the lemur, but also hope as seen in the reoccurring presence of the mythical whale. We need as a community to not look away from the issue or seek only our reflection in the mirror, but rather realise that Earth being our sanctuary cuts both ways and it’s all symbiotic - in order to provide us shelter, it needs to be preserved by all of us and this is all skillfully illustrated both in Flow and Éiru. Hopefully, parents would be as attentive watching them as their kids.

Words by Iveta Rusinova