This one's a beautiful, tender, quiet romantic drama with a moody atmosphere, set in a tight knit Welsh fishing community. It's a touching story about a man waking up sexually in the middle of his life, and how he, his family, and everyone around him deal with it, which makes it emotional and sentimental without ever getting over the top. The slow burn plays out against a landscape that's as bleak as it is gorgeous, where quiet, closed off men are stuck inside rigid ideas of what masculinity should be. Some people might be reminded of "God's Own Country," but I think both films are lovely in their own way. Jack is a middle aged guy who co-owns a mussel farm with his rough around the edges brother Dyfan, and the tension between the two of them is simmering under the surface right from the start. Dyfan's three sons all help out with the work, while Jack's sulky teenage son Tom keeps skipping out. Jack's been with his wife since they were both 16, and...
We meet Amin, who his telling his story for the first time ever to his film maker friend Jonas. This is something that he has not shared with anyone. The story of his fleeing his home country Afghanistan and how he made his way in Denmark eventually. You expect the narration to be harrowing but thankfully its also very humane at the same time. Amin is a kid growing up in Kabul, when he along with his family have to flee in 1989 after the civil war. He, along with his elder brother, two elder sisters and the brother manage to reach Moscow to seek refuge. Amin, through his conversations with Jonas, talks about his attempts to get out of Moscow with the persistent rampaging corruption and the fear of cops lingering over them all along with his family and the struggles he had to face along the way coupled with his own coming-of-age as a closeted homosexual. Amin's story of how they once took a boat, were then sent back to Russia from Estonia and how eventually even though he managed to flee, it came at a very high cost of losing his family forever to continue to be legal. Times have passed now and his family accepts for who he is, but Amin will forever be in debt of his siblings and he would not be where he is today if not for them. He now happily lives with his boyfriend.
This is not an easy story to tell and to watch. We all have our notions of what fleeing one's country is life, but we can never ever come even closer to empathizing with what people really have to go through who deal with it. Especially when Amin talks about a previous relationship where his ex-boyfriend threatened to tel the truth to cops, which forces Amin to never tell the true nature of his story. Through Amin’s story, we see life on a wire, a balancing act of needing to live every day and simply existing in purgatory where you have no home. Hearing Amin’s story, we must reconsider our notions of “home” and how we take such a concept for granted because it’s never been endangered and likely will never be. I was surprised but eventually very happy that the film was shown with animation, because its more powerful with real voices.
Flee is a very very important story to tell and to watch. It is haunting and it should haunt us. When we ignore refugees, we leave them to a system of exploitation and greater danger created by our own indifference. I’m so grateful Amin decided to tell his story because I believe through Flee it will create converts to people who want to find ways to help refugees, who see them no longer as people huddled in camps but as individuals with hopes, dreams, and lives that are worth living. (8/10)
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