Writer-director Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee has become the first movie to earn Oscar nominations for best animated feature, documentary feature and international feature (representing Denmark).
The film follows pseudonymous subject “Amin,” who, preparing to marry his husband, shared his extraordinary escape from Afghanistan as a child refugee, which led to the making of this intimate story of his life.
Rasmussen has been friends with “Amin” since age 15, when they were in school together in a Danish village. “He grew up in Kabul in a loving home, and then everything was torn to pieces as Russia withdrew from the country and the Taliban took over,” Rasmussen said in a previous interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “It started out being a refugee story about trying to find a place in the world where you can be who you are with everything that entails. It’s basically a story about trying to find a home.”
Oscar-nominated actor Riz Ahmed was an executive producer and voiced Amin in the English-language version. The film was released in December by Neon and Participant.
Rasmussen talked about the making of the film in an episode of THR’s Behind the Screen.
The complete list of Oscar nominations can be found here.
