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Flee Tells a Transcendentally Human Story in an Impeccable Union of Forms


For as long as it’s been around, sometimes I feel like we’re only just starting to explore the possibilities of animation. In many ways it’s an art form capable of so much more than live-action cinematic storytelling, and every once in a while a uniquely special movie comes along to remind us of that. Flee is one of those movies, a film that expands the form into new territories, new ambitions of what kind of stories can be told in animation, what kind of truth the form can bolster.
As an animated documentary, Flee is not quite the first of its’ kind -Ari Folman’s 2008 Israeli film Waltz with Bashir beat it to the punch. It’s arguably also not a true documentary, given large sections of it are dramatizations of true events rather than an actual record of the events themselves. But this is a movie that can’t be confined to one label, something demonstrated plainly in its’ unprecedented simultaneous Oscar nominations for Best International Film, Best Animated Film, and Best Documentary -at least two of which it deserves to win.
Jonas Poher Rasmussen is the man behind the extraordinary project, in which a gay Afghan refugee called Amin Nawabi (his name is likely changed for privacy and safety concerns), recounts his story fleeing war-torn Afghanistan with his family in the 1980s, their harrowing experiences throughout Europe, and how he ultimately wound up in Denmark, all the while struggling with his sexuality in atmospheres and company too dangerous to be open in.
The movie is structured like a documentary, Amin being interviewed by Rasmussen, intercut with glimpses into his home and education life, while his story is illustrated through recreations of his past, and era-appropriate news footage. Those occasional bits of preexisting footage are the only live-action elements in the film though, everything from the interview segments to Amin’s dramatic story itself to the unclear memories being expressed is done through animation -and it raises the question of why. Why choose to animate this story instead of tell it in a more conventional documentary fashion? The answer becomes clear early into the flashback reenactment where we see the arrest of Amin’s father in an abstract though entrancingly fluid sketch style that translates effectively what is for Amin the recollection of a traumatizing feeling more than a distinct memory. In animation his story can be told not only with vivid visual detail that a mere staging could never capture, but with a kind of expressiveness that speaks to the indefinable nuances of his experiences.
This goes for each style of animation Flee adopts over the course of its’ runtime to best illustrate the facets of Amin’s story –the stuff that remains present for him into adulthood and those moments that are mere blurs of emotion unassigned to specificity. And it’s captivating, as Rasmussen finds in the animation a way to explore Amin’s drama creatively whilst staying true to its’ harsh authenticity. Amin’s journey sees his family separated in their flight from the new dangers in Kabul. First to Moscow, where his eldest brother living in Stockholm, manages to secure passage for his sisters –albeit a gruelling, extremely hazardous passage. Then the efforts of Amin, his brother and mother to escape Russia, where they live illegally off of increasingly high police bribes –all this over the course of several years, Amin growing up on the run and having to place his trust in unreliable people. And we see its’ effect on him in the present. How instinctively he’s resorted to a flight mindset, how it’s difficult for him to trust anybody –he got into Denmark by misleading authorities as to the specifics of his asylum-seeker status, claiming his entire family was dead. The fear of this exposure and of him being sent back to Moscow or Kabul as a result, continues to haunt him.
And yet it's not all harrowing survival and misery living, there are respites of relief: Amin with his family watching Mexican soap operas on their tiny TV in Moscow, fantasizing about Jean-Claude Van Damme, or listening to music in the back of a smuggling car with another refugee boy he has a crush on –but these remain always in relation to the hardships, the trauma that can never be truly avoided. Out on the sea in a flooding ship, what first appears to be a vital rescue by a Norwegian barge becomes a dashing of hopes. Likewise, the opening of the first McDonalds in Russia is a scene of joy for Amin and his brother before the corrupt police arrive and it turns dark real fast. Amin’s account doesn’t hide the inhumanity that comes out of a situation manufactured by an inhumane system –and here and there it is dotted with specific terrors that even through the prism of animation and with only a voice to convey, are so real and immediate in how clearly they have shaped him. It’s devastating.
The story is at once both collective and personal, in many ways analogous to hundreds of refugee plights and yet in more ways very specifically belonging to Amin -his perceptions, emotions and tokens as important as the journey itself. The seeds of his adult personality are glimpsed in his earlier life, his values foreshadowed in the ways in which his adolescence is defined by constant uncertainty as well as having to hide for so long a major part of his identity. Heteronormative reinforcement subtly pervades his life in the talk and attitudes of those around him and he doesn’t even have the grammar provided to understand his difference. The film emphasizes it well as the underlying tragedy of Amin’s development, how his personal fulfillment must come secondary to the needs of his family, who in all likelihood would not be supportive of his sexual orientation should they know. The first time he experiences a gay nightclub early into his freedom then is that much more affirming and powerful, as are the moving circumstances surrounding it.
It’s a very emotional movie, its’ effectiveness only augmented by the animation that successfully permits Amin his anonymity and paints his story in richer depth and detail than could otherwise have been achieved. Obviously it has a searing resonance now in the midst of another refugee crisis in Europe, where especially in places like the U.K. and France it seems like basic humanity towards asylum seekers is in short supply. One of the aims of Flee is to cultivate that humanity, and you’d have to be a pretty hardened person not to empathize with refugees and what they are forced to go through after seeing this film.
Flee is a work of profound art and immeasurable importance, an achingly humanist story of struggle, survival, sacrifice, and self-acceptance. Apparently there’s a plan to release an English-language dub featuring two of the films’ big name executive producers, Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau –which I think is a hideous idea. Amin’s story deserves to be told with his own voice unfiltered, and it deserves as wide an audience as possible. If allowed that platform, just imagine what it could do!

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