«Flee» the animated documentary that competes in three categories of the Oscar Awards
«Flee«, from the Danish Jonas Poher Rasmussen, is nominated for best international film, animation film and best documentary in the next Oscar. This animated documentary, made this way to protect the identity of its protagonist, tells the tremendous story of a homosexual Afghan refugee in Europe.
The three nominations for Oscar join the prestigious award Annecy Animation Festival (France), at both European Film Awards -best documentary and best animated film- and another forty more awards.
It is a story about identity, also sexual, since Amin (fictitious name) had to live with the looks and the accusations for being homosexual. Amin he is not an invented character, but rather a real friend of the director. «I met him when we were 15 or 16 years old. She appeared one morning in the small town of Denmark where we lived He lived across the block, and he never wanted to talk about these things. I respected him, but he was a black box in our friendship that was closed for many years.", account Jonas Poher Rasmussen.
Beyond its obvious formal and conceptual interest, «Flee» is valuable for the mixture of delicacy and clarity with which it starts from the intimate (an intimacy that benefits from the long-standing friendship between director and protagonist) to expose a universal drama and its terrible and inconsolable aftermath.
Being a refugee is not an identity
Making this movie made Rasmussen It will change your perspective on migration. «We started doing it in 2013, in 2015 it was the refugee crisis and all of a sudden we saw refugees all over Europe«. She realized that being a refugee is not an identity, but a circumstance of life.
Despite the harshness of the story, the film navigates between humor, the dramatic and the emotional. We discover the sexuality of Amin when he imagines Jean-Claude Van Damme winking at him from the television. «We needed that fun part, because the movie is told from our friendship«, confesses the director about something that was always clear to him. «It's not just a story about refugees. Of course he was, but that doesn't mark you, a person is much more. He is academic, gay, he has a house, he loves cats, he likes Van Damme and I wanted all of that to be in the movie because that connects you to him. Sharing a laugh creates a connection and it's nice, you generate empathy«.
