One of the movies I missed at Sundance this year was the powerful animated documentary Flee, which tells the story of gay refugee Amin Nawabi.
When the film begins, Amin is about to be married, which compels him to reveal his past for the first time, and forces him to grapple with a painful secret that he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and his soon-to-be husband, Kasper. Recounted mostly through animation, Amin tells for the first time the story of his extraordinary journey as a child refugee from Afghanistan.
Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau executive produced the award-winning film, which hails from Danish-French documentary filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Flee was produced by Monica Hellström and Signe Byrge Sørensen and the documentary went on to win a Grand Jury Prize this year's Sundance Film Festival, where it was acquired by Neon.
Flee recalls the films Waltz With Bashir and Persepolis, both of which were powerful animated movies. Directed by Ari Folman, the superb Bashir follows a soldier as he tries to reconstruct his own memories regarding the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, while Persepolis traces director Marjane Satrapi's childhood in Iran amid the growing tensions of the political climate in that country in the '70s and '80s. It also brings to mind Keith Maitland's excellent animated movie Tower, about the 1966 sniper shootings at the University of Texas at Austin.
I was a fan of all three of those films and am eager to get a look at Flee, which is expected to hit select U.S. theaters later this year, though Neon has yet to announce an official date. I expect the film will receive a significant awards push, so watch the trailer below and let me know if you think it'll be a contender, and which category -- animated or documentary -- you think it stands the best chance to win.
