FLEE

By Jonas POHER RASMUSSEN

EESTI RAHVUSRINGHÄÄLING - as BROAD

Documentary - Completed 2021

Amin, a successful academic, grapples with a secret he has hidden for 20 years. Recounted to director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, his close friend, he tells the story of his journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan for the first time.

Festivals
& Awards

Sundance Film Festival (online) 2021
World Cinema Documentary Competition World Cinema Jury Prize
Goteborg FF (online) 2021
Dragon Award Best Nordic Documentary
Toronto - TIFF 2021
TIFF Docs
Busan IFF 2021
Wide Angle - Documentary Showcase
Vision du Réel 2021
Audience Award
    • Year of production
    • 2021
    • Genres
    • Documentary, Animation, True Story
    • Countries
    • DENMARK, FRANCE, SWEDEN, NORWAY
    • Languages
    • DANISH, DARI, RUSSIAN, ENGLISH
    • Duration
    • 90 mn
    • Director(s)
    • Jonas POHER RASMUSSEN
    • Producer(s)
    • Monica HELLSTRÖM (Final Cut For Real ), Charlotte DE LA GOURNERIE (Sun Creature Studios)
    • Synopsis
    • An Afghan refugee agrees to tell a remarkable personal narrative of persecution and escape on the condition that his identity not be revealed. As a means of fulfilling that wish, his filmmaker friend uses striking animation to not only protect this young man but also enhance his tale, bending time and memory to recount a visceral, poetic, and death-defying journey dictated by deception, loneliness, and a relentless will to survive.

      The result is Flee, a film unbound by documentary constraints and swept up in an astonishing array of archive footage, ’80s pop music, and hand-drawn craft that brings audiences directly into the experience of a teen fleeing multiple countries—and the psychological impact on how he loves, trusts, and understands his burgeoning identity. Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s film is a triumph of storytelling and filmmaking ingenuity, but its greatest asset is the empathy and trust Rasmussen forms with the film’s protagonist, whose clarity and vulnerability grant us access to a unique refugee tale.