One of the opening-night selections for the online 2021 Sundance Film Festival, Jonas Poher Rasmussen's Flee isn't a typical documentary. It's not the first animated documentary (Waltz With Bashir comes to mind as another that examines Middle Eastern conflicts), but the form is destined to feel unusual. When a medium in which each image is an illusion is combined with a form that lays claim to truth, it's inherently something of a contradiction.
Flee, however, has good reason to be animated, because the medium offers anonymity to the film's subject, a gay Afghan refugee living in Denmark using the pseudonym Amin Nawabi. It also paradoxically makes the film's many flashback sequences to Amin's tumultuous childhood feel more real. In a typical documentary, there's a divide between any live-captured footage and reenactments; animating both eliminates that divide. The sound design is particularly impressive in how it blends live sound and the foley required for the animated flashbacks, with period-appropriate pop hits further enlivening the soundscape.
The animation itself is primarily functional, with flashes of beauty. This isn't a big-budget production, so the general focus is detailed keyframe art at the expense of in-betweens and fluidity. It's in the moments where Amin's memory fails, or in which he must rely on his imagination to guess the fates of family members, that the art becomes more abstract and the animation becomes gorgeous. Interspersed with the animated scenes are real live-action news broadcasts and B-roll footage, both to better explain the political situation and to emphasize "this really happened."
The question of reality becomes particularly intense in Amin's life. This film is seemingly the first time he's publicly told much of the truth of his refugee story, and without going into spoilers, some of the stories he's told others are very different. If you took the details completely out of context, one could easily imagine xenophobic politicians twisting them anecdotally to sow distrust of refugees. But with the full context of why Amin has lied and what his actual story is, you'd have to be a complete monster to do so.
Amin's life has been tumultuous and intense, but Flee finds entertaining moments of levity (the usage of Jean-Claude Van Damme's Bloodsport is a highlight) and a general sense of optimism in the face of tragedy. There's one particularly masterful sequence toward the end that prepares you for the worst possible outcome of a situation, and then offers the biggest sigh of relief. Amin won't ever be rid of trauma, but he's found love, family and acceptance.
Flee premiered at Sundance on Jan. 28, and has an encore on-demand screening on Jan. 30. An English dub, featuring the voices of executive producers Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, will be released later this year.