#Animated Documentary Paints A Refugee Tale More Vivid And Sharp Than Reality

But why the anonymity? It takes a long time for Amin to make his confession, and the film breezes through his recounting of an idyllic childhood full of open courtyards and exciting stories told by his pilot father. But then he hits a wall. Amin gets up from the couch he’s lying on, where Poher Rasmussen is filming him from an eagle-eye view. He rustles through an old box, where he finds the diary he kept as a teen. In a clear but halting voice, he reads aloud the tragic circumstances that befell his family: his sister raped, his siblings murdered, his mother and father viciously killed, him alone surviving. It’s an upsetting tale, and even more upsettlingly, a familiar tale, one that many refugees fleeing from Afghanistan amid its years of political upheaval have experienced in some form or another. But, Amin reveals, it’s not the whole tale. In fact, it’s not his story at all.

There’s a thin line that documentaries walk between evocation and exploitation — in movies we crave a narrative, a story; and reality isn’t always as simple as that. To reduce someone’s life into a series of twists and revelations is something that many an acclaimed documentary has been accused of, not to mention the countless true-crime docuseries that have no qualms about stepping over that line. So there’s a deep sense of unease that proliferates the first few minutes of “Flee,” as it builds to this so-called revelation. But despite the artifice afforded by the feature film structure, not to mention the semi-escapist nature of animation, “Flee” is as clear-eyed as could be in its unveiling of Amin’s true story.

Amin’s flight from Afghanistan didn’t necessarily play out as he said, nor as he had led Poher Rasmussen and the rest of their circle to believe for decades. His father had been arrested by Mujahideen officials, never to be seen again, but his mother and siblings were very much alive. They had fled together to Russia, where they resided illegally, waiting until his older brother in Paris to rustle up enough money to smuggle them out. But the fear of being discovered, and the horrible, dehumanizing hardships they suffered while trying to leave Russia, left deep invisible scars on Amin, who spent the rest of his life in fear of being found out. He was never done fleeing, and even now, as an adult engaged to a man who only wants to buy a house and start a new life with him, he wants to flee again.