Celebrate LGBTQ+ history month and Valentine’s Day today with the animated documentary FLEE, the first film ever to be Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary, Best Animated Film and Best International Film in the same year.
The film tells the story of Amin (a pseudonym), who fled Afghanistan in the 1980s, eventually reaching Denmark as a teenager. Now, as he prepares to marry his partner, Kasper, he is finally ready to tell his story to his friend, Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen.
Using animation allows Amin anonymity, and also humanises the story, which intersperses Amin telling his tale with his childhood in Kabul, the traumas of his flight and the years he spent in Russia with his family. He also discusses how he realised he was gay – he was fantasising about Jean-Claude van Damme, but there was no word for how he felt in Afghanistan. Occasionally interspersing the animated, personal tale with live news footage of the mujahedin and key moments in Amin’s history.
The film is voiced by the real Amin and Rasmussen, or it is also available in a dubbed version, sympathetically dubbed by Riz Ahmed as Amin and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Rasmussen.
You can watch Flee in UK cinemas now or online at Curzon Home Cinema.
