FLEE tells the story of Amin Nawabi as he struggles with a painful secret he has kept under wraps for 20 years, a secret that threatens to derail the life he has built from himself and his husband-to-be.

Compassion is determined by our imaging

A girl of eight years old, packed tightly against the cold, finds exactly the hug she is looking for in the garbage bags with stuff: a big white unicorn. Joy on the face. It was a hopeful picture from the broadcast Together in action for Ukraine for Giro555, last Monday. That, and the conversation with the resilient 12-year-old Ukrainian Victoria with her dog Dosia on her lap in a station in Poland, waiting for how now. When people have a heated debate about why one action is given more than the other, why one refugee seems more valuable than the other, they often point to a negative explanation: racism . Yet, I think, there is another explanation for the closeness and engagement that many people are feeling right now. Of course, it could be up to my 'media diet', where it Youth Journal and taking a benefit night, but not before I saw so many items about and from the perspective of war coverage, kids , pets and wives , so much coverage of one war at all, by the way.

Sympathy is best generated through children, pets and women in need — in that order. The recent Taliban takeover of power in Afghanistan saw mostly images of Taliban fighters and Afghans being compromised by aircraft; in another major refugee crisis, the influx from African countries, it includes images of anonymous African young strong men on the flight; leaving family behind. So, men on the run, while we hear about Ukraine over and over again men who are going to fight . I was thinking of Denmark. How would that go with it there? After all, the Danes passed a strict and controversial migration law last summer. The Danish Minister for Immigration and Integration, Mattias Tesfaye, himself son of a refugee from Ethiopia, initiated the law stating that refugees should be accommodated in their own region. In a country led by a minority social democratic government, the law was passed by a large majority.

The deterrent effect that must be based on the law proves to be effective. The number of refugees fell from 21,000 in 2015 to more than 1,500 in the first ten months of 2021. As far as I can see it, since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, Danish newspapers have become even more intense at the moment than in the Netherlands debated the two sizes issue . And then it was all the time: last Monday, a small message appeared on the website drdk , that the first Ukrainian refugees had arrived in Denmark, thirty-five to be precise. Thirty-five As harsh as the refugee policy is in Denmark, Danish cultural policy is as generous. Paradoxically, this year is a great animated film about the fate of a refugee. If Flee teaches us one thing, then it is that identification with every refugee is possible, if you only light the individual out of it. Culture, imaging, media: how we hear and read about refugees determines our sense of empathy. Flee (created by Jonas Poher Rasmussen) is about Amin, a gay Afghan, who looks back on his flight from Kabul as a boy. The story is true, but the movie is an animated film, with occasional documentary images inside.

As is often the case with Danish films, the film is also a philosophical investigation: what does it mean to be a refugee? Amin is lying on a carpet, the director (his former school friend) asks him questions. His first question to Amin: what does home mean to you? “That I feel safe,” answers Amin. He uses the Danish word here trygt , which is often also used as a definition of 'happiness', which makes the Dane know right away: aha, he's one of us now. Being at home means that suffering has stopped, that the temporality is over. By the way, Amin also always has a pet around him, a cat. For the imaging of Danes hospitality, the film is very easy to digest: the young Amin receives a friendly welcome on arrival in a country where he can be who he is. Unique is that Flee at the Oscars is nominated for both best documentary, best non-English language film as well as best animated film, and thus takes part in the category of fiction and non-fiction. The film earns all three awards, go see it. If reality is too gruesome, the imagination still offers hope. Like Amin's story or the discovery of a magical fiction creature, a unicorn in a garbage heap.

Stine Jensen is a philosopher and writer.

A version of this article also appeared in NRC in the morning of March 11, 2022
PLEASE. Don't give hearts.

Loading full article...