The testimony of an Afghan refugee is told with audacity and sensitivity in this astonishing, affecting Danish documentary.
★★★★★
In light of Priti Patel’s recent proposal for a controversial new borders bill for the UK, few films showing at this year’s London Film Festival will arrive with quite the same degree of urgency as Flee: a poignant, innovative, Sundance award-winning documentary from Danish director Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Produced by Riz Ahmed, Flee recounts the harrowing journey undertaken by an Afghan man and his family fleeing war-torn Kabul in the 1980s in a powerful and profoundly moving film that blends archive footage with beautiful hand-drawn animation.
The visual style, from a team of animators that includes Michael Helmuth Hansen (who previously worked on the animation for films such as FernGully: The Last Rainforest), is deployed, in part, for the purposes of protecting the identity of the man whose remarkable tale the film is capturing. That man is Amin (his real name is never revealed), a friend and former classmate of Rasmussen now living a settled, open life as a gay man in Denmark with his partner. On the verge of marriage, Amin is compelled to reveal details of his childhood he has never disclosed to anyone before. As such, there’s an immediate therapeutic power at play here: the first time we see Amin—or, rather, the animated version of Amin—he is horizontal on a carpet, eyes closed.
“What does home mean to you?” Rasmussen then asks him. It’s a probing meditation to open with: a deceptively simple question for someone who the idea of ‘home’ has long eluded. And yet it is entirely befitting the story he is about to tell: one that takes us through years and across continents, from Afghanistan to Moscow and eventually to Scandinavia. Coinciding with a time of bourgeoning sexuality for the then adolescent Amin, it is testimony that is at once alarmingly familiar and deeply personal. How deftly the film manages to balance the two gives Flee much of its captivating brilliance, handling each aspect of its subject’s story with seamless weight and sensitivity; with both complexity and nuance. The result is a wash of vibrancy and melancholy, unfurling as a striking, emotive rumination on identity and what it means to belong.
In subverting the more traditional talking-head format of documentary filmmaking, the movie, for large portions, plays out like a gripping daydream.
But by its very design, Flee is able to dig for something a little deeper. In subverting the more traditional talking-head format of documentary filmmaking, the movie, for large portions, plays out like a gripping daydream. Such is the stirring, haunting beauty of the animation, it feels almost as if Amin himself is pensively sketching before our very eyes his memories of perilous sea crossings, corrupt authorities, acts of shocking injustice, and, occasionally, moments of intimate tenderness. There is a simultaneous vivid and hazy quality to such sequences: immersive enough to place us firmly at the scene of Amin’s trauma, yet abstract in a way that spares us the most painful details of the horrors he lived through. Neatly interspersed throughout are montages of archival footage, an added visual tool which serves to contextualise Amin’s experiences against the socio-political backdrop of the places he and his family found themselves in.
Perhaps most crucially though, there is very little feeling of exploitation to any of this. Rather, Flee is an artful, sensitive capturing of what is a vital, humanising story. And contrary to what its 90-minute run time might suggest, there is plenty to ponder and unpick here—issues that will resonate with audiences from every corner of the globe. After all, alongside the thematic tapestry of survival, liberation and catharsis that Rasmussen has delicately weaved together, Flee is a touching, loving tribute to a friend. It is urgent but beautiful; devastating yet hopeful.
The Verdict
The importance of the film’s messages—of which there are many—is matched only by the splendour with which it communicates them. With Flee, Rasmussen has expanded the possibilities of documentary filmmaking. Truly spellbinding stuff.
Words by George Nash
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