Visually sparse but emotionally vibrant, filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee follows a compelling animated style. It certainly would've lost its vitality if the film had not been animated but only been a collection of Amin’s real-life interviews.
The Oscar-nominated documentary film takes us along the journey of Amin, an Afghan refugee who now lives a peaceful and open life in Denmark with his boyfriend, whom he plans to marry. Rasmussen manages to carve out moments from his friend’s life that he’s always kept under wraps. Making a seamless link between his present and his dredged-up past, Amin narrates his story. Despite gazing directly at the camera, it doesn’t feel as if Amin is talking to us at all. Yet, we are hooked on and are pulled closer to the subject as the film progresses.
Rasmussen sets up the narrative pretty straightforwardly, we get to witness the events of Amin’s life as the film goes on. However we don’t get to see multiple perspectives, as most documentaries show. In fact, we witness Amin’s life through scraps of his memories, interspersed with montages of archival footage from the political chaos that enveloped both Afghanistan and Russia.
The documentary starts with an animated Amin lying on a couch, facing the camera but talking to his friend, taking him through his childhood memories of living in Kabul with his mother and four siblings. He reminisces about his sister sharing stories about their father, and how he used to feel jealous as he never got to spend time with him like his other siblings. Due to their father's imprisonment following the start of the Soviet-Afghan war. Then there is also the question of his homosexuality, which he jokingly disclosed to Rasmussen with the memory of a crush on Jean-Claude Van Damme when he was six years old. Yet, interestingly, that is not the centre of his story at all.
Even when Amin is leading a safe life in Denmark in the present, he has to tell people his false cover story for years to survive, leading us to believe it too. However, the film’s natural rhythm smoothly walks us through it. On being asked by Rasmussen if his family were still alive, Amin talked about his constant fear of being removed again. He shares the story about the time he opened up to one of his ex-boyfriends, who seemed to be very understanding of his condition. But when they had a fight one day, he threatened to expose him to the police. Since then, Amin had to pretend that his family is dead to be able to live in Denmark.
The film takes us through sequences of events when Amin was yanked back to a life of violence and war several times when his home was taken away from him. To the present day, his family remains scattered in Europe with Amin pretending to be an orphan. He only reveals his real backstory to Rasmussen years into their friendship.
Flee beautifully explores the space between belonging and wandering. It partitions between the past and present. Even when Amin leads a good life in Denmark with his boyfriend, he gets pulled back by the anxiety of staying in just one place. When he has spent his entire life fleeing from one place to another, the responsibility of committing himself to just one home frightens him.