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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Now we continue our yearly look at the feature-length documentaries up for an Oscar. We kicked off this series with filmmaker Stanley Nelson on his film, Attica, about the prison uprising there. We talked to directors of Writing With Fire Sushmit Ghosh and Rintu Thomas about a news organization in India run by Dalit women.

Earlier this week, hope you heard our interview with musician Questlove on his directorial debut Summer of Love, which highlights the 1969 Harlem cultural festival. Joining me now to talk about his Oscar-nominated feature documentary Flee is writer and director Jonas Poher Rasmussen. Using animation, Flee tells the story of his friend Amin's journey from Kabul to Copenhagen as a child in 1989 after the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Jonas, congratulations on your nomination, and welcome to WNYC.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: We'll hear a couple of clips from the documentary as we go, but I want to invite you to tell a little bit of your story first. I see you met Amin in the 1990s when you were both 15. Can you talk about what your first impressions of him were and when you actually became friends?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: I grew up in this very rural Danish village. Then one day when I was 15, Amin arrived all by himself from Afghanistan and stayed in foster care with a family just around the corner from where I lived. We didn't have a lot of refugees in the area at the time. He was very fashionable. He really went into fashion and wore really nice clothes and people in the area didn't really do that. He stood out in the crowd and I just thought to myself, "Man, that guy looks cool and I really want to get to know him."

Then we started meeting up every morning at the bus stop going to high school and we slowly became very good friends. Of course, already back then, I was curious about how and why he had come, but he didn't want to talk about it. I of course respected that, but it became this black box in our friendship and also within him and something that he didn't start sharing until we started doing this film nine years ago.

Brian Lehrer: It might be surprising for some listeners who aren't familiar with the film yet to hear that this is based on a real-life friendship between you and the subject of your film. Then to hear that it's almost entirely animated and that your friend's name Amin Nawabi is a pseudonym. The animation format allowed you to keep your subject's identity a secret. Why was that important to your friend?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Well, what you hear in the film is his real voice telling his story, telling about these very traumatic events he incurred when he was a child and teenager. It's not easy for him to talk about. He could talk about it to me because we've known each other for 25 years, but he didn't really want to be in the public eye with these stories and having to small talk about these things and having to meet people at work or in the street or in the supermarket who all of a sudden would know his innermost secrets and his traumas. It was really a sense of keeping control over when he wanted to talk about these things. It was really what enabled him, in the beginning, to start opening up and start sharing the story.

Brian Lehrer: Let's get into Amin's story. It begins in Kabul in the late 1980s as the Soviet Union began its withdrawal from Afghanistan. You use real-life footage here to tell that story. Let's take a listen to a clip of two newscasts in English from that era.

Speaker 3: Overseas today, the last of the American embassy personnel in Afghanistan flew out of the capital Kabul today and went to India. Most other Western embassies are either closed or closing. The conventional wisdom is that when the Soviets are finally completely withdrawn from the country sometime in the next couple of weeks, the Afghans will set on one another and the capital will be even more dangerous than it is now.

Speaker 4: The Soviet transport circles quickly downward-firing magnesium flares to divert any heat-seeking missiles. American armed anti-Soviet Mujahideen guerillas are in the mountains around the city.

Brian Lehrer: As we continue to talk to Jonas Poher Rasmussen, who's been nominated for an Oscar for his documentary Flee. Jonas, I'm sure I'm not the only person listening to those news clips from 1989 or so and thinking, "Oh my goodness, that sounds so much like we heard just a few months ago as the United States was leaving Afghanistan."

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Totally. It was surreal to see-- I worked on a sequence where I'm in [unintelligible 00:05:05] for months and to all of a sudden see almost identical shots on the news happening now was just surreal, of course, even more so for Amin who experienced the whole thing. It's just heartbreaking and sadly relevant, and it's sad to see how history repeats itself.

Brian Lehrer: Did you have that in mind at all when you were making the film? Of course, this is up for an Oscar for films that were released in 2021. You must have been making it and fully have decided on how you were going to tell Amin's story before the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the way that went down. Did you have something like that being pending in mind at all as you were making the documentary?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: No, no, not at all. We started out making this film in 2013, so it's almost a decade ago we started making the film. To me, it started out just me being fundamentally curious about my friend's story and how he had come to my hometown back then. Of course, my perspective changed in the process of making the film especially when the refugee crisis hit Europe in 2015. I felt more of a need to give a human face to all these refugees who all of a sudden was in the highways all over Europe. I thought that because Amin's story is told from the inside of our friendship and happened 30 years ago, that I could give some nuance and perspective to the refugee narrative.

Brian Lehrer: That's interesting because the hook to current events was not so much to the US presence in Afghanistan as a corollary to the old Soviet presence in Afghanistan, but it was to a refugee crisis that the Soviet occupation and withdrawal caused in relation to the refugee crisis in Syria and elsewhere in recent times. Do I understand you correctly?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Yes, totally. I really feel a need to show that being a refugee is not an identity. Amin was a refugee, but he's not anymore. He's so much more [unintelligible 00:07:15] just understand that all these people who flee their home countries, they wish they wouldn't have to. Just because they're refugees, they're also human beings with hopes and dreams for the future.

What we see now in Ukraine is really a reminder that refugees are our friends and neighbors and it's really amazing to see how all of a sudden borders are open and homes and arms are open to these refugees from Ukraine. I really hope this is a general change in how we perceive refugees in the future, not only from Ukraine, but also from Afghanistan and Myanmar and where in the world people have to flee.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I want to open up the phones for our guest, Jonas Poher Rasmussen. First of all, anybody who has seen Flee is invited to call in and give us your own three, four, five star review, whatever, or ask the director a question, 212 433 WNYC, 212 433 9692. Also, if you've been listening since the beginning of the show this morning, folks, there obviously, and pretty coincidentally is a through-line here almost no matter where we turn, we're talking about refugees and we're talking about migration around the world by different groups of people.

In our first segment, we were talking to the New York Times' congressional reporter, Luke Broadwater, about how president Zelenskyy's speech to Congress was received yesterday. Of course, part of that story is all the refugees who are fleeing from Ukraine west into Europe. Then we were talking to Maeve Higgins, the comedian, to talk about St. Patrick's day and celebrate St Patrick's day with her. Maeve writes always about migration in addition to whatever else she's focused on. Of course, migration under difficult circumstances was such an Irish and Irish-American story.

We've got that and that, and now just by sheer coincidence, we've got Jonas here who was scheduled long in advance to be part of this series on the Oscar-nominated documentaries for his mostly animated film Flee. Then that turns out to be hooked to stories of the Afghanistan refugees from the period when the Soviet Union was collapsing and the Soviets were withdrawing from Afghanistan. If anybody out there is a refugee and wants to tell your story, you're invited.

If anybody is just moved enough to talk about this through-line, if you've been listening this morning, anything you want to say about it, or if you want to ask Jonas a question, 212 433 WNYC, 212 433 9692 or tweet a thought or a question @brianlehrer. Jonas, have you ever been nominated for an Oscar before?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: No. Oh, this is the first. I've actually been nominated for three. No, we're nominated for best animation, best documentary, and best international.

Brian Lehrer: That's incredible. I don't know if that's ever happened before. Tell me the three categories again, best feature-length documentary and what are the other two?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Best animated feature and best international feature.

Brian Lehrer: Wow. You're going to win an Oscar. The only question is which one, right?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: It's such great films we're up against. I'm just really happy to be here. I would of course love to win either one of them, but let's see.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, of course, you can't say you're going to win an Oscar. Do you know if this has ever happened before where a film was nominated in three categories in the same-- and of course, lots of films can be nominated in different categories, the best actor nomination and the best cinematography nomination and really different categories. In this case, the film itself is up for best film in three different categories. Do you know if that's ever happened before? I don't know.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: As far as I know, it's never happened before that a film has been nominated in those particular three categories. It is history, I think. It's amazing.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a call. Judith in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC as I choke on my water, Judith, you're on WNYC.

Judith: Good morning, Brian. Good morning to the filmmaker. I just wanted to say congratulations to the filmmaker. I saw this at a film festival. It was online this year, but I was just so moved. I didn't know I could be so moved by animation. I just want to say kudos to you, congratulations on all the nominations and the fact that people can actually get an inside look on what refugees go through. I think it was an amazing contribution and congratulations.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you so much. That's great. Here's a tweet that has come in, Jonas. It says heartbreaking and beautiful to watch the film now when watching the millions of people displaced all over the world going through the same tragedy gives me doubt about our ability as humans to evolve. Your friend brought you his life and story. Thank you for sharing. What do you say to that tweeter's pessimism that it gives them doubt about our ability as humans to evolve, seeing displaced people all over the world, even in 2022.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: No, but I, of course, understand the sentiment and I feel it too, but I think we need to keep on hoping and working to create better room for people all over the world. There's also a lot of focus on violence and wars, and the fact is that there is less killings now than there's ever been in the history of man. We need to focus on the positive aspects to it and then create room for these people who need help and really say, okay, but we need to make sure that we trust people, and trust them to enter our countries and borders and homes and hearts, because that's what they need. They need a place where they feel safe. We just need to keep on working. There's no way around it.

Brian Lehrer: Do I see correctly that your own family are Holocaust survivors?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: They're not Holocaust survivors, but my grandmother was born a refugee. My family fled the [unintelligible 00:13:41] in Russia back in 1919. They wasn't in the Holocaust, but my grandmother, she grew up in Berlin, and of course, being Jewish, she had to stand up in class every day with a yellow star on her chest, but then they made it out before it became really bad. They didn't go through the Holocaust, but there's definitely a story of displacement inside my family.

Brian Lehrer: There was a similar track I'm seeing to Amin's across the Baltics.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Exactly. Yes, my great-grandparents also fled across the Baltics just like Amin did in a boat and ended up in Copenhagen just like Amin did. There's definitely similarities in our stories. I didn't think about it in the beginning, but then when I started making the film and I also started to talk to my own mother about my family story, it became very obvious that this is not something that just happens in the Middle East or Afghanistan or in Myanmar, this is something that can happen to everyone, also my own family, and also now in Ukraine.

Brian Lehrer: Alex in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC, I think, wants to enter on this point. Alex, hi.

Alex: Oh, hi. First time caller, long-time listener. I was just going to say that my grandmother grew up in Kraków but had to flee the city with her family when the Nazis invaded Poland, and then basically, well, ended up in Auschwitz and then afterwards was liberated by the Russian army, but became a displaced person. Then eventually remarried. My mother was born in Germany.

Anyway, the only way they were able to get to the US was that the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society was buying farms for refugees. They ended up on a chicken farm in Southern New Jersey. That's where my mother grew up, even though my grandmother was a city person, never been on a farm her entire life, and they ended up as refugees. Thank God we're able to come over here.

Brian Lehrer: How does having that family background make you think and feel when you see these various migration situations that we talk about in the world today and in recent years?

Alex: Oh, it hits me immediately. As soon as I see cities being bombed, people being attacked. I remember the Bosnian war and [unintelligible 00:16:36] and people having to flee from there in the 90s. Then seeing what happened in Syria and now Ukraine, things in Haiti. It's affected me my entire life very, very deeply. To this day, I feel it immediately and I'm actually outraged and astonished that other people do not feel that, do not understand what that means in today's world.

Brian Lehrer: Alex, thank you for your call. Here's Daisy in Carroll Gardens who saw the film. Daisy, you're on WNYC with the filmmaker of Flee. Hi.

Daisy: Hi. I'm just going to tell you that I loved the film. I integrated at 16 to the United States. I was especially focused on your friend's journey when he arrived and he had to join school and growing up in Columbia, I was familiar with English, but I was thinking, how familiar was he with this new language that he was encountering? Everything must have just been absolutely new, you're starting from scratch. I just kept thinking of him in school and seeing all these new people and it was just so relatable, but on the next level, because he didn't have his parents and then he had to lie about his family. It was such a touching film. I loved how you mixed real images and animation.

Also, when you talk to your friends, you guys go back and forth like, "Oh, you want to lay down again? Okay. Just start telling me from the beginning," or you also put in current time, what he is right now with his partner and how he just doesn't want to settle down. I also get that. He's nervous to settle down and live in this beautiful house because all of his people and his family have had such hardships, and I feel that way. I just had my wedding in Cartagena and I just felt bad. I felt guilty about having such a luxurious wedding in another country when there is so much equality in the world. I just feel like I am destined to go through hardship, I don't deserve this. It was so beautiful in so many ways, and it's amazing. It should be shown everywhere.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Thank you so much

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. Do you want to say anything to Daisy, Jonas?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: No, but thank you so much for sharing. You deserve your wedding and I think it's important to also have joy in our lives and still help people around us. I think just by sharing stories and listening and trying to understand people who go through these things, it's crucial for us to move forward. Thanks so much for sharing it. It really means a lot.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Daisy: Thank you for making the film.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. We're going to run out of time shortly. I want to read one tweet and get your reaction to it. Listener writes, the film makes me think of Waltz With Bashir and Maus and how the "barrier of animation" allows us both viewers and storytellers to get closer to repressed reconstructed memories of trauma. How much was that a part of the decision to use animation? For people who don't know the references there, well, I mentioned Maus as an example. Of course that was a story of Art Spiegelman's family's Holocaust story written in graphic novel form or cartoon form. The listener is asking about the "barrier of animation" to allow viewers and storytellers to get closer to repressed reconstructed memories of trauma. Did you think about it at that level?

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Yes, definitely. I know Waltz With Bashir very well. It's the crown jewel of animated documentaries, and it also touched on the subject of trauma and genocide. When I saw that, when it came out more than 10 years ago, to me to see that film and be able to watch a film that's about trauma and genocide, but being able to really listen because it's animated, I think it eases the way that you talk about really difficult subjects. You don't block it out because we're exposed to so many of these stories all the time in the media.

Speaking for myself, I tend to block things out because if I start to take everything in, it just becomes overwhelming, but because it's animation [unintelligible 00:21:23] that eases the way and makes you listen more and you can talk about subjects that's really, really difficult. Definitely it was a part of the process of making the film to create a way to talk about this subject that would help people to understand what it means.

Brian Lehrer: Jonas Poher Rasmussen has made the Oscar nominated documentary animated documentary Flee, which we're doing in the context of our Oscar feature-length documentary nominated movies, but is up for three Oscars also for best international film and best animated film. Good luck on Oscar night. Congratulations. Thank you for a wonderful film and sharing it with us.

Jonas Poher Rasmussen: Thank you so much and thanks for having me.

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