Try to imagine this – you are homosexual in a Muslim country; it’s so ill-considered that your language doesn’t even have a word for “gay.” And yet, the personal sexual preference angle is the very least of your concerns. Welcome to Flee, a documentary about a man whose life could have been better … and now is, considerably.
Writer/subject Amin Nawabi grew up in Afghanistan during regime changes. He watched the Soviet Union come and go; he watched his father come and go as well. Amin’s father was on a short list of people who would likely be opponents during a certain regime change. True to form, the man was ID’ed, collected, and never seen again. As I implied above, when your government is militaristic and one-sided, it doesn’t really matter whether or not you’re homosexual.
The adult Amin is about to get married in the Netherlands. This movie is something of a pre-wedding interview (they have that? Wow, Netherlands, you’re rough). Instead of filming Amin straight talking, writer/director Jonas Poher Rasmussen decided to animate his words. It’s not exactly Miyazaki and it’s not exactly Space Jam 2, but 
it does literally paint a scene of how the boy got from Afghanistan to become a man in Northern Europe. It took years and money and patience and the sacrifices of several family members.
Two of his sisters escaped to Sweden jam packed in a crate with dozens of others in the bottom of a ship. They were found weeks later cramped and starving. I take it nobody could read the IKEA instructions or maybe they all lost the Allen wrench. Meanwhile, Amin and his ever-dwindling family were holed up, for years, in a crummy one-room apartment watching Mexican soap operas and not answering the door, the phone, or the mail. All of the remaining Nawabis took to waiting for life-supporting payments from the brother who got out successfully. They had little other choice.
The animation in Flee isn’t wonderful, but it creates an atmosphere that the words won’t necessarily convey. We get the distinct feeling of the isolation and extreme patience that must accompany this journey. Amin and his remaining family members spent years not moving, but essentially hiding. By itself, this is a form of imprisonment, not unlike that which Anne Frank endured. Flee hasn’t an ounce of levity. I’m not sure we’d want one, but it does tend to make the material both one-sided and dry. That’s reality. God help those who live it.
Amin needs to move far away
Timbuktu, Cincinnati, or Taipei
Cuz evil state intervention
Oh, did we mention?
Atop that, the kid happens to be gay
Rated PG-13, 90 Minutes
Director: Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Writer: Amin Nawabi, Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Genre: Biopics from Hell
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: One with a conscience
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Nazis, MAGA, and the other Hellbeasts that roam the Earth
