Arte: Escape, a painful animated documentary has been nominated for an Oscar 3 times

Arte: Escape, a painful animated documentary has been nominated for an Oscar 3 times

Do not miss this evening’s show on Arte “Flee”, an animated documentary about the huge odyssey of a young Afghan refugee. Excellent work that has been cited three times at the 2022 Oscars and is covered with prizes around the world.

For the first time, Amin, 36, a young gay Afghan refugee, agrees to tell his story. Lying with his eyes closed on a table covered in oriental cloth, he sinks into his past, between the shining innocence of his childhood in Kabul in the 1980s and the trauma of his family escaping during the civil war, before seizing power. By the Taliban.

After years of hiding in Russia, Amin – a pseudonym – arrives alone in 16-year-old Denmark, where he meets a director who becomes his friend. Emotions reappear throughout her story and in the buried pain. Today, a brilliant university student with his Daniel companion Casper, a young man confesses a secret he has been hiding for twenty years …

Shocking confession

“What does the word ‘house’ mean to you? – ‘House?’ Let’s see … a place where I feel safe. A place where I can stay and not have to go. This is not a temporary thing. “ It is with these extremely painful and intimate resonant words that Flee opens, a moving animated documentary that airs tonight at Arte at 8:50 p.m.

The Franco-German channel ended this European co-production, which went down in Oscar history by broadcasting to mark its 30th anniversary: ​​it was literally quoted three times for the best title in the 2022 edition. Documentary, Best Animated Film and Best Foreign Language Film. Conducted by French voices of Kian Khojand and Damien Bonar, Escape Awarded prizes worldwide (around 80!), Including Crystal in 2021 for feature films in Annecy, World Documentary Grand Prix at the Sundance Film Festival 2021, and European Film Prize for Best Documentary and Animation in 2021. Name a handful.

We tend to, for convenience, trace the birth certificate of the animated documentary film to the excellent film by Valman avec Bachir, which caused a sensation when it was released in 2008. However, the history of this genre can almost be traced back. Before the birth of cinema itself. Nevertheless, a very wide range of animated films offer a special tool for meeting a document and combining a reconstructed image.

An animation that beautifully serves the purpose Escape, Signed by Danish director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, who supports both the interviewer and co-worker poses here. If the film tells the story of a young Afghan asylum seeker in colorful colors, the most traumatic events are narrated in a black-and-white sequence of charcoal, interspersed with illusory shadows.

TV news archives also mention this story, among others A horrific sinking of an Estonian ferry in 1994 that killed 852 people : In reality, these invasions have a strong resonance, while the refugee tragedies are repeated, which is reflected today in the war in Ukraine.

“Fifteen years ago, when I was making radio documentaries, I offered to show it. But at that time he was not ready. He told me that he would share it with me the day he decided. His story “ Says Jonas Poher Rasmussen.

“The workshop in Denmark, which combines documentary film and animation, gave us the appropriate form for this project. In addition to emotionally reviving past events, the animation ensured Amin’s anonymity, allowing him to tell his story away from the public eye. “It’s not going back to his injuries. But getting back to his memory course was a slow process: it took him a while to delve into certain episodes and tell them.” The result, between painful introspection and survival catharsis, is excellent.

Escape, on May 30, will be broadcast on Arte at 20:50. Re-available on arte.tv until July 28, 2022.

Source: allocine

You may also like