The Creative Team Behind the Award-Winning 'Flee' Speaks About the Weight of the Film
Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee may be out in theaters now, but it’s been generating buzz since it premiered at Sundance Film Festival earlier this year. Told through the medium of animation, this foreign language documentary is easily one of the best films of the year. Not just because of its genre-bending ambition, but because of the beautiful and true story at its core.
Told over the course of three years and numerous interviews, Flee is meant to be a firsthand account of the refugee experience, following one man as he recalls growing up in war-torn Afghanistan and the many attempts his family made to escape.
Without downplaying the main character’s story, the reason it is finally being shared is just as important. In an exclusive interview with FilmSpeak, director Rasmussen explains, “It’s a refugee story, but it's told from the inside of our friendship.”
Being a film based on a powerful human connection, he hopes the film also speaks volumes about how refugees are no different from anyone else. He adds, “Yes, he's a refugee, but he's so much more. [I want] to be able to give a human face to the refugee story so people can kind of see [that] all these people who are fleeing are all individuals, and all have complex, psychological psyches, like the rest of us.”
Rasmussen and his film’s subject, who is simply referred to as Amin, met in high school. While he always found him interesting, it wasn’t until he began interviewing him for the film that he discovered his truth. From that point on he felt compelled to tell his story even more because, as he puts it, “To a certain extent, like our lives were kind of parallel. And then, at some point, his life took a drastic turn and became something very different.”
He added that the interviews made him realize how much weight Amin had been carrying around for all those years.
Despite being its initial run in January, the film is arguably more relevant now because of all the recent activity in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, over the last few months. While it’s sure to educate viewers who have no idea how brutal life can be in the Mideast, Ramussen admits he wishes it wasn’t as relevant. Not because he doesn’t want people to know it’s happening, but because the fact that it is still happening in the present is horrible.
The film doesn’t shy away from the brutality of the refugee experience. Not everyone’s story ends as “happily” as Amin’s. Considering all the experiences he shares, using any form of the word “happy” is a definite stretch. In the film Amin shares that, prior to the interviews with Jonas, the only other outlet he ever had was music. The same way music helped him to often escape his reality as a kid, the film’s compelling score helps navigate the audience through it.
Also speaking with the film’s composer, Uno Helmersson, FilmSpeak was able to gauge the process of audibly holding the audience's hand. Interestingly enough, Helmersson compared putting the score together to finding the right color palette for a painting or building with LEGO bricks. He said, “You have to find this color of the film…You have these kinds of ideas where you put it in, and then you back off the work, [then you watch it] and ask ‘Do I feel anything?’”
While crafting the score was far from easy, Helmersson says he only really felt pressure during production on the track “Fleeing Kabul.” “I really knew that [because this] is a crucial moment, this needs something emotionally engaging,” Helmersson said. “It's one of the few places where [there’s] real footage, but it's also the time when [Amin] has to flee the country.”
His music aside however, he insists, “It's hard to not be affected by this film…it's a pretty universal story. It's about losing something and gaining something else.” In regards to what those things are, audiences will just have to see the film for themselves to find out.