Flee

Nominated for two Oscars—Best Animated Film and Best International Film—Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated documentary portrait of a gay friend and academic who fled Afghanistan as a teen for the safer climes of Copenhagen is a masterly and thoroughly engrossing work. The fact that Poher Rasmussen gave his subject the pseudonym of ‘Amin’ allows for an openness and an accumulation of detail that can’t help but move and entertain even the most jaded of filmgoers. Unforgettable.

‘Less a sociological case study than a psychological portrait, the film is both probing and tactful. The fact that it arose out of Rasmussen’s friendship with Amin creates a feeling of trust. The director is receptive to Amin’s secrets and aware of the nuances of his personality. As much as “Flee” is a refugee’s tale of flight and eventual settling, it’s also a coming-out story, and as such a complex reflection on different forms of outsiderhood… To be an immigrant in Denmark and a gay man in Afghanistan are hardly equivalent, but the nuances of both experiences yield some touching, surprising and funny moments.’—A.O. Scott, The New York Times