A queer Sundance film is getting North American distribution.
Participant and NEON have partnered to release Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s animated documentary Flee in North America, according to Variety. The film centers around the life of a gay Afghan refugee. The official synopsis goes as follows:
“An Afghan refugee agrees to tell a remarkable personal narrative of persecution and escape on the condition that his identity not be revealed. As a means of fulfilling that wish, his filmmaker friend uses striking animation to not only protect this young man but also enhance his tale, bending time and memory to recount a visceral, poetic, and death-defying journey dictated by deception, loneliness, and a relentless will to survive.”
Flee just celebrated a successful debut at Sundance. The film even earned the grand jury prize in the World Cinema Documentary Competition category.
Flee was written by Rasmussen and Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym for the film’s main character). Janus Billeskov Jansen edited the project while Riz Ahmed and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau executive produced it. Then, the film was produced by Final Cut for Real along with animation studio Sun Creature, Denmark; Vivement Lundi!, France; MostFilm, Sweden; Mer Film, Norway; ARTE, France and Vpro, Nederland. Vice Studios also acted as an associate producer alongside RYOT Films and Ahmed’s Left-Handed Films.
“We were awestruck by Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s beautiful and intimate Flee and are so proud to join with NEON in co-distributing this film,” Diane Weyermann, Participant’s Chief Content Officer, said in a statement.
“We are extremely happy to continue our collaboration with Participant which began with the ‘Look of Silence,’” producers Signe Byrge Sørensen and Monica Hellström, of Final Cut For Real, added.
Source: Variety,
