Flee

Chronicling the harrowing journey of an Afghan immigrant and the unfathomable adversity he & his family had to navigate through to find a new home, Flee lends a powerful, heart-rending & thought-provoking perspective to the refugee experience through the first-hand account of its protagonist, and makes for a strongly moving documentary that's rendered on screen with care & consideration.

Written & directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, the film employs animation to narrate the life story of its protagonist who's been harbouring a secret he finally feels ready to reveal for the first time. The use of animation not only allows the director to sketch a stimulating portrait of the narrator's dark & traumatic past but also helps protect his real-world identity by keeping him & his family anonymous.

Though a work of rich, evocative animation for the most part, the film does make use of live-action archival footages sometimes to help ground our storyteller's testimony in reality. Add to that, the emotional wallop it provides only contributes to the film's overall bracing impact. But it's not all disturbing & distressing, for there lies his own coming-of-age story & his road to self-discovery which is beautifully illustrated.

Overall, Flee is an achingly human & emotionally stirring slice of life that's crafted with heart, told with compassion and has an apt understanding of its thematic content. Thoughtful in its approach and empathetic in its presentation, this Danish memoir is a gripping blend of artful animation & documentary realism, and definitely ranks amongst the most intimate, affecting, personal & profound films of 2021. Thoroughly recommended.

Fleeing Taliban's Afghanistan in the latter part of the last century would seem the proper subject for film or video, capturing the reality of flight from oppression to freedom. Actually, in Flee, a documentary-animation with shades of color and earth tones works even better because the reality is in the narration of unspeakable horrors lived by protagonist Amin Nowabi at several stages of his life and experienced by the viewer not distracted by film's visual reality.

Amin's quarter-century friendship with director Jonas Poher Rasmussen helps him confess honestly to the single camera about long suppressed hurt. The animation objectively captures the pain he suffers recounting the journey to freedom and recapturing his love of life.

Young Amin travels with his mother, brother, and two sisters with unscrupulous traffickers and corrupt police for months to arrive in freedom physically and psychologically damaged, separated from each other for years to come. The narration is impeccably understated as it lets the story collect the audience's grief and pity out of the documentary's reality.

Amin's story moves from idyllic, brightly lit youthful days in Kabul (similarly sketched in Kenneth Branagh's recollection of his youth in Belfast) through the darkly harrowing journey on land and sea to land his life finally now in Copenhagen, buying a house, and coming out with his partner to family and the world in a salutary note of hope for refugees everywhere at any time. The price has been enormous in lost lives and lost youth.

All is not animation because interspersed is library footage of the Russian Afghanistan invasion and speeches by former President Mohammad Najibullah. Such reality checks make sure audience is not lulled into animation's chief compromiser-its own unreality.

Amin himself may be experiencing fictionalized reminiscence even though events seem to reflet a terror that did happen and can only be imagined years later.

Flee is a masterful amalgam of animation, real-live photography, and history recounted partially from a terrible journey's reality and a hero's struggling memory and imagination. You'll understand our collective confusion about Afghanistan and our abandoning it. You'll also understand if Flee is Oscar nominated in categories such as animation and international. It's all good.

Before I watched this movie, I thought I was going to hate it. Why is that ? Because this movie looked like a movie that was made just to get awards. Isn't it a prize-winning subject ? A gay muslim Afghan men, war, flee, bad situations, family, drama. But after watching the movie, I saw that it wasn't like that. I was particularly impressed by the fact that it was a true story, and I understood and appreciated that it was told via animation. It was a very different and good experience. Reminds me of the movie "Persepolis". I like it.

A semi-documentary about the journey of Amin, who fled from Afghanistan.

First of all, I was surprised to see a documentary with animation style intermingled with real footages and sceneries. This style worked incredibly well because not only did it protect the identity of Amin, but also allow for beautiful visual crafting that elevated the emotion of Amin. Since Amin was mostly calm in his voice, the animation and footages helped conveying the stake and danger of the situation.

The story itself was harrowing yet compelling. I love how the story revolved around family from beginning to end. As a person who came from a family of immigrants, family is always an important theme. Because of that, Amin's testimony did hit it home.

Overall, an incredible story. 8/10.

Very powerful portrait of a life with so many obstacles that most of us can't even imagine. A great story but the documentary also does a great work mixing animation with real images on a very clever way and in a better way than I've seen before in similar docs. Great score also.

My only complaint is that I would love to have seen more 20 minutes of it and to go a bit further, for example, on his current relationship with his family. I really wanted to see how it happened when he met her mum again...