FLEE & the Weight of Shadows
“WHAT I LEARNED FROM AMIN’S STORY is how long shadows can be,” observes Jonas Poher Rasmussen. “These experiences grow into your life and affect you in the years after the experience. That is something you can’t see in people. You can’t see what they carry.”
Rasmussen brings the unseen weight of trauma to the screen in Flee. The Danish-French director, speaking with POV during the Toronto International Film Festival where Flee was a runner-up for the People’s Choice Award for documentary after scoring the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, recounts a journey though which he helped a friend escape his shadows. Flee shares the experience of Rasmussen’s friend, renamed Amin Nawabi in the film, as he unburdens himself of the story of his escape from Afghanistan during the 1990s amid the reign of the mujahideen. Using animation and voiceover, Rasmussen chronicles Amin’s plight in gripping detail as his friend unspools the perilous journey in which his family were relocated to Moscow by human traffickers. But Flee is a story of a life always on the run, as Amin recounts his second and third journeys, coming out as a gay man—no easy secret in his conservative family trapped in a largely anti-LGBTQ Russia—and then moving to a more understanding Danish society, where, as an Afghan Muslim, he still felt isolated.
For some people, camouflaging one’s identity can be as easy as throwing on a plaid shirt and dumpy jeans and checking one’s speech and mannerisms to present as illustrates how race, ethnicity, sexuality, and religion can compound the burdens one carries. As the film interprets Amin’s story through its confessional animated odyssey, explores the intersections of identity and the respective weights and freedoms they bring.
