Jonas Poher Rasmussen grew up in a small town in Denmark and, at the age of 15, became friends with Amin, a slightly older boy from Afghanistan who was in a foster care family because he’d fled his country all by himself.
You know, I met him when I was 15, and he arrived in my little, Danish, rural hometown.
So to kind of bring people back to a specific situation, you have to lay down, close the eyes, and talk present tense in order to really create presence in the way of talking.
And the fact that he wouldn’t have a public eye on his story – because what you see in the film, what you hear in the film is the very first time he shares his story.
And I want to ask you about an especially haunting sequence when members of his family are led by smugglers on a pitiless walk through a dense, cold forest.
And you kind of sense in his voice, you know, that, all of a sudden, he would have a hard time remembering details, and he would kind of slow down.
But, you know, in the beginning, we had this agreement that we’re just trying it out, you know? I think I did between, like, 15, 20 interviews during the span of, I think, three or four years.
You know, I’m struck by the fact that in Denmark, as Amin grows older, he could say that he had begun to grasp that he was gay.
But then, of course, when we start talking, I kind of realize that this is a double coming-out story.
But you could also just tell on his face – you know, he just went back 20 years and all these years where he couldn’t – where he had to keep the secret, where he felt like had to keep the secret, and the fact that he couldn’t reunite with his family because he had to say that they were all dead.
SIMON: Among so many poignant and gripping sequences, there’s one that would make anyone in the news business cringe, and that’s when Amin’s family is living in foul circumstances.
RASMUSSEN: It’s difficult to really tell the refugee story because often refugees are just described by what they need and not as the complex individuals we all are.
SIMON: Jonas Poher Rasmussen, who is director of the animated documentary “Flee,” now showing in theaters in Los Angeles and New York – more cities in January.
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