‘Flee’: Using animation to protect an Afghan’s identity

Documentarian Jonas Poher Rasmussen long wanted to tell the story of his friend, who fled Afghanistan as a child and ended up alone in a Danish town. But that friend didn’t want his identity revealed, and there was no footage of his journey. The answer was animation — but it wasn’t cheap.

“In the beginning, when we started doing the financing, we had a lot of people saying, ‘Well this sounds wonderful!” Rasmussen says. “Then they saw the budget and they said, ‘Well, this can’t be done.’ So it was really a long time of slowly finding more and more funds.”

Rasmussen tells KCRW about his years-long journey to document his friend’s incredible story. And explains how he hopes his movie “Flee” — Denmark’s submission to the Oscars this year — can offer some perspective on the current refugee crisis in Europe.