Tuesday, March 19, 2024

Movie Review (Middleburg Film Festival): With Wonderful Animation and a Compelling Story, ‘Flee’ is One of the Best Films of 2021.


Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen

Synopsis: On the verge of marriage to his long-time boyfriend, a successful academic in Denmark is confronted with a secret from his past.


The crisis of Afghanistan has been tragically a neverending one. It has been a country under siege from abroad and within for decades with too many stories to count. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee is another one of these stories, but this is a very different one. The background of the main figure is different and how it is told is another thick layer to the presentation which adds another form of realism to the screen. How the subject and Rasmussen are close to each other is part of a trust that allows this tale to come out naturally and not fraudulently.

The story is about a man named Amin (we are told that real names were altered to protect the real identity), an Afghan-born man who is living a happy life in Denmark and about to marry his husband. Before he does that, however, he finally tells his story to Rasmussen, a high school friend who himself is learning the full truth of Amin’s life. In a series of interviews, Amin talks about how he fled Afghanistan as a refugee in the early 1990s as the government fought the Taliban; it should be noted this documentary was made well prior to the Taliban’s return to power this year, but how directly similar this story makes it even more disturbingly coincidental.

Amin’s childhood is at first one of happiness, dancing to Western music while wearing his sister’s nightgown, unaware of what the word homosexuality meant (or as Amin says, “homosexuals didn’t exist”) and how it was seen in the strict Muslim country. This is quickly disrupted when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan to protect the communist government and his father is taken away, never to be seen or heard of again. Once the Soviet Union collapsed and a power vacuum between opposite sides tries to fill the void, it is obvious that Amin and his family cannot stay. How he gets from Afghanistan to Denmark is one story of torment, heartbreak, horror, and sacrifice.

The sequences in bouncing from country to country, with Amin and his family doing almost anything to get as far away as possible, is daunting. The opening words by Amin tell how much he felt not at home, even in Afghanistan, because he was never safe and could never stay in one place. Denmark finally became the safe home, although his arrival there was by accident. How Rasmussen depicts Amin’s story using his own voiceover is another dimension in storytelling with a feeling of filming the filming of the documentary, especially with the animation filling in where a camera would be. It is shown that Rasmussen, even as Amin’s friend, speaks to him almost as a psychologist while Amin is laying down trying to relax.  You can tell that, even as an adult, Amin hasn’t found his peace and accepted himself for who he is.

Documentaries are made to be informative, to tell non-fiction directly to the viewer. Archive footage, camera to the interviewee, and establishing shots of the location in question. What Rasmussen does instead converts it into an animated portrait that does not make viewers imagine what the subject is saying. It is now depicted to us in detail based on the subject’s memories, putting us on the ground and through their eyes of what they were going through in such harsh conditions. Amin’s story is harsh and brutal and we can even feel it in its 90 minutes.

Grade: A+

Follow me on Twitter: @bsusbielles (Cine-A-Man)

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