Flee, review: this unlikely Oscar contender is a thrilling proposition
The Telegraph15 cert, 89 mins. It’s a supremely unlikely combination: aside from Ari Folman’s 2008 film about his memories of the 1982 Lebanon War Waltz With Bashir, and perhaps Marjane Satrapi’s animated 2007 auto-biopic Persepolis, it’s hard to think of another relatively widely seen film that would even be eligible in all three categories. Director Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s background is in documentary, but in hand-drawn animation he has found the ideal medium for a story that unfolds as a string of reminiscences – some flurried and impressionistic, set down hot in a matter of moments, and others recorded with serene, Tintin-esque precision, their details refined through having been dwelt upon over a number of years. Certain details concerning his family don’t initially add up, and the unveiling of these fictions, along with Amin’s reasons for adopting and internalising them, becomes one of Flee’s most quietly devastating manoeuvres. But this is a film which simply wouldn’t have worked in any medium but animation: in an hour and a half we come to know Amin intimately without actually setting eyes on him at all.
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The star of Oscar-nominated ‘Flee’ gives his first interview: ‘I wanted my story to be seen’
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