Sundance 2021 : Day One. Although we are missing movies on the big screen and sharing the camaraderie of watching them with other industry professionals , we literally are enjoying being in the comfort of our own home, and not having to shell out an arm and a leg to be in Park City at this time as usual.
The less said about our first pick the better. Weird Nights is an avant-garde cabaret club with some outrageous hit-and-miss acts which was filmed in a sterile atmosphere with no audience. It so desperately needed an inebriated crowd to work at all.
However our first feature FLEE was an excellent adaption of a heartbreaking real life queer tale. Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym) recounts his story of having to flee Afghanistan as child in the 1990’s in the middle of the night when his family were being chased by Mujahadeen . If they remained they would have faced being abducted and killed, a fate that had already befallen his father.
He tells all of it direct to documentarian Jonas Poher Rasmussen who reconstructs the story so compellingly with animation. Even now Amin is still reluctant to tell the whole truth as there was a point in his life where he was desperate to be granted asylum in Sweden, that he told the authorities that his entire family had been executed.
Being able to flee Afganhistan when he did made Amin one of the fortunate few, but escaping to Moscow was no bed of roses. Reduced to staying in a cramped apartment all day with his older brother, two sisters and mother, they got by on what ever money an adult brother working as a janitor in Denmark could send them. Without papers the Police would stop them in the streets and take whatever little money they had on them. They were lucky they were boys as girls were made to really suffer.
When the brother could scrimp enough money together to pay traffickers the two sisters were smuggled into Sweden. The mode of transport was a container locked tight with 60 other people that travelled for days on a freighter. They were lucky to survive.
Next to try to leave was Amin with his mother and brother, they were locked in the hold of another freighter that almost sank and then drifted for days. The Estonian authorities ‘rescued them’ only to eventually send them back to Moscow.
Amin was still a teenager when his eldest brother had saved enough money to pay more reliable traffickers . It was intended that he would fly to Denmark via Istanbul traveling on a fake Russian passport. However the plane ticket was for Sweden where he knew no-one, but following the instructions of the trafficker he destroyed the passport just as he arrived, and ask for asylum.
This was to be his Nirvana, but now many years later, with a very successful career (he had even studied at Princeton), his turbulent past still affected his ability to find happiness. His family are spread throughout Europe and on top of that he has still not come out as gay to any of them. After all Afghanistan after where ‘homosexuals’ didn’t exist, and although he now lived as an openly gay man with a very charming boyfriend, he still couldn’t find it in himself to fully embrace it.
Rasmussen was a gentle interviewer patiently taking his time to allow Amin to share his traumatic story at his own pace. It seems that the process has some sort of cathartic effect on the handsome Afghan who seemed to be ready to finally move on by the end of the film.
Kudos to Rasmussen for making Amin’s story so completely engaging in this very moving movie, and also to Amin himself for having the courage to share it so publicly. It reminds us all of the fragility of life, especially for LGBTQ people, whose very existence could still get them killed
P.S. The movie was bought by NEON so expect to see it at some Film Festival near you later this year
Labels: 2021, documentary, Sundance
