“Flee” wins the Cristal for animated feature film



The film Flee by Jonas Poher Rasmussen – Annecy Festival

  • “Flee” won the Cristal for feature film at the Annecy Festival.
  • It was one of the four feature films in competition which dealt, always with great originality, with the subject of refugees or migration.
  • The Danish film won an award at Sundance and is due to air on Arte soon, unless it finally hits theaters.

Who to succeed in 2021 to Calamity at the top of the prize list of the 60th Annecy Festival? Flee, a Danish animated documentary by Jonas Poher Rasmussen, whose title means “to flee” in English and which tells the odyssey of a young Afghan refugee who became an academic perfectly integrated in Copenhagen. It is this film, both sober and sharp, that the jury wanted to salute for its animation qualities, in front of two other clear successes: My afghan family by Czech director Michaela Pavlatova (jury prize) and Crossing by the Frenchwoman Florence Mihaile (mention of the jury), two other extremely strong and touching films. For the short films, the Crystal was awarded to Ecorce, a Swiss film by Samuel Patthey and Silvain Monney.

Flee lifts a modest veil over Amin’s story. You have to see this young Afghan caught in adversity disembarking from Russia, alone, after having fled with his family from Kabul in the midst of civil war. A true odyssey that Amin had not shared with anyone before it was brought to the screen by one of his closest friends, director Jonas Poher Rasmussen himself.

Neat animation and charcoal sketches

Careful animation to tell the present, period documents and charcoal sketches for the somewhat vague memories of a teenager during his exile. This animated documentary on the refugee crisis offers more questions than answers as to the impossible choices of a family in the midst of adversity or the doubts of an isolated minor in search of a home.

It is the same subject, but with a feminine gaze and in an inverted course, which My afghan family by Czech director Michaela Pavlatova, also inspired by true story, of a young Czech who falls in love in Prague with a student she will follow and marry in Afghanistan, before finding herself in the heart of a loving family , certainly, but confronted with the mores of a country ruled by the Taliban. Crossing by Florence Miailhe, who is distinguished by an animated painting technique on glass plates, pays homage to her grandmother who fled the Odessa pogroms at the beginning of the 20th century by aiming for the universal through the journey of a family persecuted in an imaginary region and for undefined reasons. Less subtle in its narration, Lamya’s poem is the fourth film in the competition on a similar subject: the flight of a young Syrian woman confronted with that of a poet who had a similar fate in the 16th century.

Healthy humor

What place for humor in the face of all this misery? Annecy did not fail to reply through some nuggets like the very schoolboy Little Mustard by the German Marcus Rosenmüller and the Spanish Santiago Lopez Jover, the very sour Hayop Ka! from the Filipino Avid Liongoren or the very childish My mother is a gorilla (so what?) by Swedish Linda Hamback. The humor was even more frankly present outside of the competition, in
Luca, the latest Pixar, previewed in a crowded room, or in Even mice go to heaven, a fantastic tale for children aged 5 and over, due in theaters this fall.





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