How Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Animated Documentary ‘Flee’ May Be Poised For Historic Oscar Showing

deadline.com:

When the Oscar nominations are announced on Feb. 8 Flee could pull off an unprecedented trifecta—becoming the first film nominated as Best Documentary Feature, Best International Film and Best Animated Feature.Not bad for a project that began with modest ambitions.“It started out with me wanting to do a short animated doc about a friend of mine,” director Jonas Poher Rasmussen says. “In the beginning I just thought it would be like 20 minutes, and then from there it grew and grew.”The film resulted from a bond between Rasmussen and Amin Nawabi forged a quarter century ago when a teenage Amin arrived as an Afghan refugee in the small Danish town where Rasmussen grew up.

Flee is Denmark’s official entry in the International Film category, and in December it made that category’s shortlist.“I think it’s the first documentary that’s a Danish entry, so it makes me extremely proud and just to represent my country, it does mean something special,” Rasmussen says. “I can tell that people here are really rooting for me and the film, which is a nice feeling.”In December, Flee also earned a spot on the Documentary Feature shortlist (there is no shortlist for Animated Feature).

From the film’s debut at Sundance 2021 it has gripped audiences with the tale of a gay kid growing up in Afghanistan in the 1980s, the era when the Soviets controlled the country.

The government seized Amin’s father as a suspected opponent of the regime. He was never seen again.With the Mujahideen on the brink of seizing full control of Afghanistan in 1989, Amin and his mother and most of his siblings fled—first to Moscow.