Unfortunately the magnificent, poignant film Flee did not win an Oscar, but is deeply embedded in the hearts of viewers
Illustration/Uday Mohite
There's a delicious scene in Danish-French director Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee, featuring Bollywood star Anil Kapoor, that South Asians will adore. Flee made Oscar history by being the first feature to earn three nominations in top categories—Best International Feature, Best Documentary Feature and Best Animated Feature. Thrillingly, in an acquisition led by Shailja Kejriwal, the film has been acquired by Zee5, and expected to stream on it later this month. Based on a true story, it is a deeply moving, 2D-animation, creative documentary feature on ‘Amin Nawabi,’ a kid from Kabul, who fled Afghanistan with his family when the violent mujahideen took over around 1989. He has since grown up as a refugee in Denmark, with an impending marriage to a gay Danish partner, Kasper. In a flashback, Amin is flying a kite on the terrace as a kid in Kabul, as his two sisters play cards nearby. The cards have Bollywood stars’ pictures on them. One sister beseeches the other—who has ‘two Anil Kapoors’—“to trade a Vivek Mushran and Mamik Singh for an Anil Kapoor,” but the other sneers, “I don’t need either of them, and it’s always nice to have a spare Anil… he’s so handsome,” whereupon Anil Kapoor, on the card, cheekily winks at her/us. It’s just too funny and charming, underlining again—as we saw in Shahrbanoo Sadat’s masterly Parwareshgah (The Orphanage), the Afghans’—and South Asia’s—pervasive love for Bollywood.
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Unfortunately the magnificent, poignant film Flee did not win an Oscar, but is deeply embedded in the hearts of viewers. It has already covered itself with glory: after selection at the Cannes Film Festival in 2020, it won the Sundance Film Festival’s World Cinema Grand Jury Prize Documentary in 2021, and Cristal award for Best Feature at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2021. Having fled Afghanistan, Nawabi and his family spent years hiding in Moscow, until he could arrive safely in Denmark as a refugee. Now a successful academic, he is commitment-phobic with Kasper. He is held back by a dark lie about himself, fed by the human traffickers who got him to Denmark, which, if known, can rip his future any time. He is able to confide to Jonas (Rasmussen), his old childhood friend and filmmaker, but not even to his partner Kasper (I’m avoiding spoilers here). Also guilty about his family’s sacrifices to get him to Denmark, he prioritises his career over his lover, to honour them. For long, he also kept his being gay a secret from his family in Kabul. Beyond fleeing from Kabul, he is metaphorically still fleeing from his lover (for a career in the US), his family, his home, and himself. The catharsis of expressing his repressed past to the filmmaker unburdens him, leaving him more open to settling at home. Amin Nawabi is a pseudonym that allows the real refugee anonymity, and the device of animation story telling further reinforces anonymous representation, while allowing for poignant flashbacks of greater intensity and poetry than documentary re-enactments may allow.
Rasmussen is compelling as the director. Vulnerability and melancholia drive most characters’ ‘acting’. The story and screenplay by Amin Nawabi and Jonas Poher Rasmussen uses a clever device: first we believe Rasmussen is a therapist that Nawabi is confiding in; later he is also Amin’s childhood buddy, finally he is also the filmmaker, sharing Nawabi’s story with the world. This multi-pronged sutradhar is a masterstroke in sharing crucial information with us, that would otherwise remain a buried secret; only later we realise, hey, your close friend is not supposed to be your therapist, and your therapist is not supposed to reveal your confidences to the world. Yet, the film plays on a central irony: we often share our secrets with strangers/others that we can’t share with loved ones; he hasn’t even told Kasper, with whom he is house-hunting before marriage. The camera, apparently by Mauricio Gonzalez-Aranda (uncredited), is remarkable. Editor Janus Jansen, holding us rapt for 89 mins, is brilliant, as is animation director Kenneth Ladekjær. Uno Helmersson’s music and Supervising Sound Editor Edward Björner’s work are evocative. The producers include a host of impressive women, including Monica Hellström, Signe Byrge Sørensen (two-time Oscar-nominee for producing The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence; also Sourav Sarangi’s Char-the No Man’s Island), and Charlotte de la Gournerie. Actor Riz Ahmed, also Executive Producer, is terrific voicing Nawabi, blending the American, Danish and Dari accents, but with the cautious hesitation of an immigrant who won’t trust happiness. There’s a marvellous theek hai casualness about Nawabi being Muslim, gay and from Afghanistan, and having a gora lover, without any mullah dramebaazi. Like Ari Folman’s powerful animation documentary Waltz with Bashir, Flee reflects on the unreliable, malleable nature of memory. That Indians are rarely part of top, globally acclaimed, international co-productions, set in South Asia beyond India—including Sadat’s The Orphanage, Deepa Mehta’s Funny Boy (Sri Lanka), or Abdullah Mohammad Saad’s Rehana Maryam Noor (Bangladesh), highlights the poverty of the Indian film producers’ imagination, and lack of empathy for our neighbours’ stories. Nonetheless, there is something infinitely satisfying about a climax with old Bollywood-style intimacy between lovers: instead of two nodding roses, there’s rustling in the raspberry shrubbery—but I’ll take it!
Meenakshi Shedde is India and South Asia Delegate to the Berlin International Film Festival, National Award-winning critic, curator to festivals worldwide and journalist.
Reach her at meenakshi.shedde@mid-day.com
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