Movie Review: Animated doc ‘Flee’ traces the journey of a gay refugee
metroweekly.comFlee (}}}) aptly illustrates his point, tracing the refugee journey of gay Afghan scholar Amin Nawabi.Amin, friends with Rasmussen since the two met as classmates in the ’90s, had long kept hidden the full, harrowing true story of how he escaped from war-torn Kabul across Europe to Denmark.
As Rasmussen explains in voiceover, he had always been curious about how this Afghan teenager simply one day appeared at their small-town Danish high school.
Rasmussen’s gentle pursuit of the whole truth frames Amin’s dramatic retelling of his and his family’s daring flight from civil war, just one remarkable refugee story among millions around the world.Rendered in sparse yet vivid 2D animation, Amin and Rasmussen chat over wine, or with Amin kicked back on a couch, therapy-style, recounting happy days of his childhood, or the terror of being packed inside a shipping crate with scores of other desperate, frightened refugees.
Throughout, the animation style and palette vary to evoke different moods — the pain of loss, the joy of flying a bright yellow kite on a sunny day, Amin’s shame and embarrassment at being viewed as a refugee.Although Flee can tend towards describing rather than depicting Amin’s emotional state, animation is, of course, infinitely flexible as a means of recreating scenes from his memories.
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