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You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. Acquired out of Sundance and released nationwide by Participant and Neon earlier this year, the film connected with critics and audiences across the world with its empathetic telling of Nawabis escape from Kabul as a young boy with his mother and siblings. Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription. Amin Mita, South River, NJ holds a Architect license according to the New York license board. The voice of Amin Nawabi. But these are all conservative concerns. var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772606EmbedPopup63ffe3583da98');
And be reminded that this is a real person. Ahmed a 2021 acting Oscar nominee for Sound of Metal and this year up for his second career nomination for the live action short The Long Goodbye was brought onto the project in 2020 by Suroosh Alvi of Vice Studios. if('' == 'floating') {
For a festival traditionally not keen on animation, Jonas Poher Rasmussens Flee has surprisingly garnered remarkable accolades. If you hire a contractor through BuildZoom, that contractor is ), and eventually closed out as the winner of this years World Cinema Grand Jury Prize: Documentary. Names and locations have been changed to protect his identity. Unlock this free profile function resize77260663ffe3583d0a3(wrapper){
Animation director Kenneth Ladekjaer worked from the footage Rasmussen had shot, closely copying aspects of Amins style and behavior the way he gestures and speaks, how he wipes his tears away when he cries while making slight alterations to protect the identity of the real Amin. The familys life was never the same. I had to wait until he was ready to tell me.. accountable to us. var readyStateOverflowInterval;
Rendering interview footage and his subjects memories in animated form, Rasmussen transformed Nawabis gripping personal saga into the critically acclaimed film Flee, a historic triple nominee at the 94th Academy Awards, where it is the first feature to vie in documentary, animation and international categories. id: "captainform_js_global_vars",
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I think because were exposed to so many stories all the time in the news about refugees, about bad things happening around, and you always see a human face whos struggling and I think, for me at least, I have to block things out because its too much. ("elementType"in e))return!1;var n=null;if(n=e.following?e.following.parentElement:e.inside?e.inside:e.replacing?e.replacing.parentElement:"script"==e.elementType?document.head:document.body,null==n)return!1;var l=document.createElement(e.elementType);delete e.elementType,l=jQuery.extend(l,e),e.replacing?n.replaceChild(l,e.replacing):n.appendChild(l)};
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We worked a lot on moving between archival footage and the animation so it would feel seamless, as if they belong to the same world., But when the first drafts of Amin came in, Rasmussen says, they were a little too cartoony, with big eyes, like in Disney films and everything looking a little too smooth, too nice. No documentary film to date has been nominated for best picture at the Oscars. WebSeveral years ago, Amin Nawabi sat for a series of interviews with friend and filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen with a caveat: in telling his story, his identity would remain Maybe 15 years ago, I asked him if I could do a documentary about his story. There were moments of vanity he initially wanted to take out the part where he asked for medicine against being gay because he was embarrassed by that but it was always a conversation.. Like all relationships, there are some challenges in Amin and Kaspers romance. Helmersson too started with Amins voice. Animation proves an ideal medium by which to both mask and reveal the identity of a gay man who escaped Afghanistan and reinvented himself. Now Hollywood Shuffle is a classic, Remember that Harry Styles Spitgate drama? So I tried to get out of the way of that and use my music to emphasize the feelings that Amin cant or wont express.. To receive the magazine, click here to subscribe. We recommend getting multiple quotes for any construction project. Or the moment when Amin enters the gay bar in Stockholm, enters that whole colorful, wonderful world [a moment] that makes me cry no matter how many times I see it.. And I think some people have picked up on the dissonance between the two responses around refugees who come from different countries.. A contender in three categories documentary, animation and international feature Jonas Poher Rasmussens moving account of a gay mans journey from war-torn Afghanistan to Denmark could make Oscar history. });
This keeps the viewers attention on his voice, rather than relying upon a visual aid; the story remains true to Nawabi than it does to Rasmussen. 94104. 2023 The Hollywood Reporter, LLC. The wonderfully expressive animation also conveys the emotions of the characters. WebView the profiles of people named Evan Amin. He lives 10 miles from my place in Copenhagen He saw the film and really liked it as well, and wanted to be part of it.. Until now.
Rasmussen and Nawabi's friendship would grow in their small town in Denmark. Every frame of Flees animated sequences was hand-drawn drawn electronically on a computer but still drawn by hand, says Ladekjaer by Flees graphic artist team. All of this is explained in the beginning of the movie, so that audiences know that although the names have been changed, and actors are providing most of the voices, its a true story based on a real persons narrative account. At its core, says Ahmed, Flee reminds us of the humanity behind words that they only see in headlines such as Afghan or refugee. These words and the debates around them can be divisive, but I think this film reminds us of the core of humanity that we all share underneath our so-called differences. You can watch and really listen. }, 50);
Rendering interviews and memories in 2-D color and abstract animated sequences, the format also affords anonymity to Nawabi, who is credited as co-writer and appears using a pseudonym. captainform_create_form_popup(popupParams);
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But despite putting a face to the often abstract refugee experience, Nawabi who appears in the film under a pseudonym has maintained his identity and his privacy, forgoing media appearances and interviews about the film. captainformCustomVars['772606'] = '';
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Several years ago, Amin Nawabi sat for a series of interviews with friend and filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen with a caveat: In telling his story, his identity would remain private to the world, freeing him to speak openly about his harrowing experiences as a child refugee escaping war-torn Afghanistan in the 1990s. Its someplace safe. Its been really amazing to see how people can relate to the story, even if theyre not refugees or gay And I know it really means a lot to Amin, because hes kept it a secret for so many years. }
March 15, 1935 . }
report high rates of satisfaction, and homeowners who research As a child, he escaped from Kabul to Moscow, where harsh times and corrupt officials made it necessary for him to sneak West to Europe. Neon released Flee in select U.S. cinemas on December 3, 2021. var captainformCustomVars = {};
"Growing up in a very small village with like 500 people in it and then suddenly have someone who was kind of your own age and who stood out, was like, OK, this is interesting," Rasmussen said. var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! Rasmussen has known Nawabi since they were teenagers who went to the same high school. So when he was talking about being in his house, I would ask him, What did the garden look like? EF NEON Licensed contractors contribute $200 to DCA's Trust Fund at the time of application and each time they renew or post a bond. Amin is not his real name, though. Send us a tip using our annonymous form. For Amin, the process seems therapeutic, helping him process the guilt, shame and fear he carries scar tissue of never feeling fully accepted anywhere hes lived. jQuery(wrapper).css('top', jQuery(window).height() * 0.4 + wrapper.width() + wrapper.css('padding').replace('px', '') * 2);
Amin Nawabi is not the real name of the Afghan refugee introduced in the Sundance movie Flee, nor is that his real face, which has been distorted by animation to protect his identity. He wasnt there, so he couldnt tell us exactly what things looked like, but his feeling of fear was present. Deadline is a part of Penske Media Corporation. What are the colors of the wall? Like all these things, Rasmussen says. This story first appeared in a December stand-alone issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. var append_element = append_element || function(e){if(void 0==e)return!1;if(! But before all the acclaim and accolades was Nawabi's desire to simply share his story and bring a sense of humanity to the refugee experience. var wrapper = jQuery('#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63ffe3583dcbe');
He was killed because he was considered to be a threat to the Communist government, according to Running parallel to the story of Amin the refugee is the story of Amin coming to terms with his harrowing history and with his own identity from the first stirrings of sexual awakening, prompted by a revealing Bloodsport poster featuring a short-shorted Jean-Claude Van Damme, to asking a Danish Red Cross social worker for medication to cure him of his unnatural desires, to living a settled, open life as a gay man and preparing to marry his partner, Kaspar. Flee had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the World Cinema Documentary Grand Jury Prize.
Flee is a mostly animated documentary about the real-life story of Nawabi, which is a pseudonym used to protect his true identity. How can we trust Nawabi now if we could not have before? captainformThemeStyle['772606'] = '';
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His father was seized as the Mujahideen took over Kabul after the Soviet exit in 1989. Amins father Akhtar Nawabi was a pilot, but he died tragically. The fragmentation of Amins memories is conveyed by this fragmentation of the animation, says producer Signe Byrge. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org. The rest of Amins story is a painful and horrifying account of long family separations; living in poverty; and being detained, shunned or incarcerated for being refugees. We've made the bid collection process extremely simple (and free). var popupTrigger = jQuery("#captainformForm772605EmbedPopup63ffe3583d2ea");
Illustration remains a practical mode of masking identity. The distinction underscores the films unique blend of interview and evocative animation, which vividly brings to life the tale of Amin Nawabi, a gay Afghan academic in Copenhagen opening up for the first time about his harrowing experiences as a child refugee. It was important he didnt end up as a caricature. Some of these sequences appear to have been rotoscoped directly over video recordings, la Richard Linklaters Waking Life, while others were storyboarded and drawn from scratch. The interview technique, which you see in the film, it looks like therapy but it actually comes from radio, says Rasmussen. captainForm772606PreloadInterval63ffe3583d0a3 = setInterval(function(){
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