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Flee Movie Review

Flee is a 2021 internationally co-produced animated documentary film directed by Jonas Poher Rasmussen. It is a very good, emotional film about the refugee experience.

The film follows Amin, who is on the verge of marrying his husband. He shares his story for the first time about his hidden past of fleeing his country as a refugee. This movie takes a necessary look into the recent history of Afghanistan, which makes it especially relevant given the recent atrocious events in the country that is now overrun by the Taliban. The film is basically a documentary, but one that offers an encompassing look into one particular man’s experiences as a refugee.

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Amin is different from other refugees having in mind that he is gay, but in my opinion that element is the weakest in this film as they don’t quite deal with his sexuality all that much, and once they deal with it, we see that he was accepted easily, which to me sounded false. The protagonist himself is only slightly developed, making the movie as a whole somewhat distant and removed. I wanted to know more about him as a person.

But where Flee excels is in the portrayal of each and every dark new chapter in his story. The Russian section definitely felt overly harsh, but still memorable, especially in the first unsuccessful attempt to get out of the country. That entire section was brutal and filmed in such a way that you feel its immediacy.

Flee is animated in such a way that it gives urgency to some of its more difficult sequences. The harsh brush strokes of those black-and-white scenes accompanied the most heartbreaking and disturbing scenes beautifully while otherwise the animation is sweet, well designed in characters and quite polished.

The movie is very well edited, well directed and the dialogue on display is pretty good. The movie’s at its best when incorporating some excellent historical footage and an insight into the history of Afghanistan. It offers a very personal, but universal tale on the refugee experience, but it’s hardly original at anything that it does.

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