Madeline
Flee is an animated film, but do not let that fool you into thinking it will be light and airy, because it is not. Flee is the story of a teenaged boy fleeing Afghanistan for a better life and how he ended up in Denmark to lead a happier life. The story is not easy, it is not fun, but it is eye opening.
Premise of Flee
The story of Flee starts with an animated man laying down on a pattern. The viewer quickly learns that this man is being filmed to tell a story. The story starts with a happy child in Afghanistan and ends in present day in Denmark. What happened in between is the difficult story of fleeing Afghanistan to Russia and getting from Russia into Denmark. The story starts with a full family and ends with a man and his husband. There is much to unpack to get from the old days in Afghanistan to today.
We learn about the horrors of being kept a secret in an apartment where no one is to leave. By leaving, they put themselves at risk of being deported back to Afghanistan. We learn about the price they must pay to leave this apartment but they are unable to work and therefore rely on family members. We learn that when they can escape, it is not guaranteed it will be successful. We learn that the family must be torn apart to have any hopes of getting out. All because this sacrifice is better than the place they left.
The Animation Piece
Halfway through watching this movie I started to guess the intention of making it an animated piece. The dialog is of a documentary nature and it is implied that that was the intention. But because the maker of this movie decided to make it an animation, there are some images that imply more than a life motion film can show. This is things like people drowning in the ocean, being locked in a crate on a ship for three days without escape, and other horrors this movie discusses about being a refugee.
Final Thoughts
Although this story is more depressing than entertaining, this is a film that deserves five thousand out of five stars. The story is horrifying and yet the movie making is beautiful. It may not be an everyday movie but it is a movie making the time to sit down and watch with a grimic all the way through.
