OSCARS 2022: Flee (2021)

There’s an interesting trend among the Oscar nominations that I don’t think is getting much attention. The Academy seems to have woken up to the fact that documentaries are actual movies. Two years ago, "Honeyland" would make history as the first documentary nominated in another category. Namely, in Best International Feature. This would happen again last year, when "Collective" would place in both categories. And now, this year, a film called "Flee" has pulled off an even rarer hat trick. It's nominated for Best Doc, International Feature, and Animated Feature. This may be due to some rule change somewhere I missed but it is interesting to see Academy voters realize documentaries deserve consideration across all the categories. 

"Flee" tells the story of Amin Nawabi, who relates his life experiences to filmmaker and friend Jonas Poher Rasmussen. He grew up in Afghanistan, amid a war between the mujahideen rebels and the Soviet-backed communist government. (Which unpersoned his father when he was young.) After the withdraw of Soviet support in the late eighties, he would flee with his mother and sisters to Russia, where his older brother lived. Constantly harassed by the police in the U.S.S.R., his family would make several botched, traumatic attempts to sneak into a less hostile country. Eventually, Amin would end up in Denmark by himself, living under an assumed identity and forbidden from contacting his family. It would begin a long journey to forgive himself for his choices, reconnect with his family, and become comfortable with his own sexuality. 

"Flee" skirts the line between documentary and docudrama. The film is made up of a mix of Amin directly telling his story to Rasmussen and dramatic re-enactments of his experiences. (All of which is animated but we'll talk about that more in a minute.) It's an approach that gives us a clear understanding of a major element of Amin's young life: He spent most of his adolescence on the run. His family escaped Afghanistan, then spend years trying to escape the Soviet Union. He didn't finally make it into a stable country until he denied the existence of his family, the one thing that remained constant throughout his chaotic life. Of course, that was traumatic for him. "Flee's" mixture gives the viewer a clear understanding of the refugee experience. The most effecting moment being a recollection of a time news crews reported in the squalor they lived in without helping any. 

Of course, there's a question "Flee's" presentation raises: Why was this animated? It seems to me that a lot of the animation in the film was drawn over live action footage, which the final scene seemingly confirms. The animation is best utilized when depicting the blurry nature of Amin's memories. At times, the illustrations become more abstract, sketchy human-like figures moving through empty landscapes. Or a Croatian soldier's masked face morphing into an exaggerated maw. If you want to read into it more, the use of animation could also represent Amin's disassociation from his own past. Yet it strikes me as mostly a stylistic choice, to render realistic events with realistic animation. 

"Flee" is at its most humanistic when examining Amin's inner life, as a homosexual man growing up in various repressive states. He realized he was gay at six years old, after developing a crush on Jean-Claude Van Damme. (Probably the only time the action star has been mentioned in an Oscar-nominated movie.) He kept his desires and orientation a secret all throughout his youth, limiting it to meaningful glances at other men or fleeting near-touches with boys his own age. It comes to a head during the film's most touching moment, when Amin finally comes out to his family. This plays out in a nicely unexpected fashion. The film handles its protagonist's love life with a meaningful tenderness. 

My only real criticism of "Flee" is that I wish it used its animation a little more expressively. If you could tell the same story more or less in live action, you have wonder why that choice was made. Still, this is more nitpick than anything else. "Flee" is a sometimes harrowing, frequently powerful examination of a difficult life that ultimately has something like a happy ending. It's neat to see that a genre hybrid like this would go so far at the Oscars. Considering its nomination across three specialized categories, I feel like the film has to win one of those awards, and it wouldn't be totally undeserved either. [7/10]