Flee review – animated documentary tells a miraculous story of survival

We never learn the identity of the person whose life story forms the basis of Danish filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen's Flee, but we don't doubt its truthfulness for a second. This gripping and life-affirming animated documentary, which made history this week after earning three Oscar nominations (Best International Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary), is a testament to the capacity for human survival and the lengths some people must go in order to find a place to call home. But it's also an essential tribute to the power of the animated medium, because, well, it's hard to imagine this story working quite so well in any other form.

Flee follows the life of one “Amin Nawabi” over a twenty year period, after he's force to flee his native Afghanistan as a child following the Soviet withdrawal and the assumed murder of his father. Thrown into an impossible situation, he first relocates with some of his family members to a tiny flat in Moscow, before journeying by boat across the Baltic sea in what amounts to one of the film's most harrowing sequences. Eventually, Amin is trafficked to Denmark, but is haunted by a lie he must tell in order to secure citizenship in the country: that his family are all dead.

The film takes the form of an “interview,” conducted by Rasmussen, a former classmate of Amin, whose real voice is heard throughout but whose identity is concealed by the use of animation. It's a perfect execution for a story that must remain anonymous, while the simple but striking visuals – intercut with archive footage that gives context to the political situation at the time – absorbs as much as it allows us to wonder just how bad things were in reality.

The inherent sadness of the piece is counter-weighted by the film's sense of humour, especially in early scenes as Amin, who is gay, comes to terms with his sexuality by way of an infatuation with Jean-Claude Van Damme. And the film feels crushingly timely in its depiction of the plights faced by refugees, displaced from their homes and cast into the unknown. If the darker edges have been sanded off somewhat, it does little to diminish the film's overall power. Flee is packed with empathy and truth.

Flee is now showing in cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema.