Animation as a Buffer

Flee (2021) - Rasmussen Jonas Poher Rasmussen's animated documentary, Flee, chronicles harrowing journey of Amin Nawabi (pseudonym used for protection and privacy), an Afghan war refugee to the West, as he recalls his traumatic childhood experiences.


Rasmussen, a Danish radio-documentarian, teaming up with Copenhagen based animation studio, Sun Creature Studios, concocts layered, delicate, personal story that is as haunting and powerful as any live action narratives and documentaries about war and refugee crisis in the last couple of years - Fire at Sea, Human Flow, The Load, Quo Vadis, Ida and Limbo.


Flee owes a lot to Ari Folman's groundbreaking auto-biographical animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir, about Sabra and Shatila Massacre and Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, from the perspective of her Iranian upbringing. Like with Bashir and Persepolis, Flee uses animation to elucidate one's memory. But if the former are culled from directors' own life experiences, subjects who were willing to express themselves as artists in a specific medium, the latter is using the medium to give a distance from its introverted subject: Rasmussen thought in telling a story of his shy, refugee friend since middle school, using animation was a good way to provide him a buffer and anonymity. With muted colors, simply but functionally rendered style only the Scandinavians can offer (overseen by animation director Kenneth Ladekjær, characters storyboarded by Simon Rouby then animated by Gilles Cuelier), balances out perfectly with a very heavy subject. Flee draws on highly subjective and personal memories of war, using both figurative and more abstract style to depict them.


Flee is about a young Afghan boy, Amin, who liked to run around in his sister's dress, embroiled in Afghan conflict in the late 80s - Taliban's take-over the country as Soviet troops retreated. Amin's father who was an intellectual and deemed a threat to Taliban, one day got arrested and disappeared, and his aging mother and siblings had to flee the country and to go to the West.


Some of Amin's traumatic memories and secrets were never revealed to anyone before - especially about his family and him being gay. It all comes out in the interviews his friend Rasmussen conducts, a casual interviewing method where subjects are lying down, like in a therapy session. So the preliminary interviews with Amin stayed intact in the film, with the subject's real voice. Flee moves freely in and out of those interviews making temporal leaps as Amin recalls his painful memories and at times, memories that are hard to articulate in words.

Amin's mother and his siblings took a plane out of Kabul on the eve of Taliban takeover and landed in Moscow, the only destination that accepted their tourist visa. This is the time where Soviet Union dissolved and was in complete chaos. Corrupt cops were shaking anyone for money and abusing its frightened citizens.


Amin's oldest brother, then living in Sweden, arranged an apartment for them to stay and sent money for them to get the smugglers to cross the border to the West. The smugglers turn out to be the worst people in the world, as bad as corrupt Russian cops. Their words took roots in Amin's brain forever: "When you get to your destination, tell them you don't have a family that they are all dead." This was the only sure way to get a refugee status. And this is what Amin would later tell anyone, even to his closest friends.


Two sisters went first, trapped in shipping containers for months with sixty other people off the coast of Sweden in the Baltic Sea. The experience was so traumatizing, they can't even speak about it to this day. Marooned in Russia with threats from cops to deport them back to Afghanistan, Amin, his older brother and his mom takes off again, leaving their fate in the hands of vicious, inhumane smugglers. After crossing the snowy border and a boat ride, witnessing human miseries everywhere, they get captured by the Estonian coastguards and end in a refugee camp where nothing works. Time stand still, after many months, they are given two choices - either rot in Estonian refugee camp forever or back to Moscow.


Flee is accompanied by some 80s and early 90s news reel footage of post-USSR world, of the horrendous human suffering in captured refugee boats, refugee camps and it reminds us once again, how the West and its media devoted too little time and attention to the humanitarian crises at hand, same as today.


Marooned what seems to be forever in Moscow, it lends some time for some tender moments as Amin discovers his sexuality, however repressed his was, accompanied by the opening of the first ever McDonald's in Moscow and its creepy celebration with the real news footage.


After many years in Moscow, they decide that it will be Amin who should be first to go: this time, with the more expensive smugglers route. Leaving behind his mother and older brother, Amin is instructed by the smuggler that he has to rip off his fake Russian passport as soon as he gets to the West and declare his family dead. He finally gets to Copenhagen- a wrong destination, but the Western city in a Western country nonetheless. 


There are many touching moments, but I teared up when young Amin asks the attending doctor in Copenhagen if he could get a medicine to cure his attraction to men. Coming out as gay to his supposedly conservative Afghan family later on is another tender, heartbreaking scene that really struck me.


Flee is an intimate, compelling account of a refugee story and a beautiful coming of age story told in a friendly, easier to digest way, via animation. But it's an important reminder that there are thousands of stories like Amin's and refugee crisis hasn't really ever stopped, if not vastly intensified with the whole world in sociopolitical crises for the past decades.

Interview: Hubert Sauper on His Intimate New Documentary, EPICENTRO

Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper, known for his scathing documentaries on devastating effects of post-colonial, globalized world - Darwin's Nightmare (Tanzania) and We Come as Friends (South Sudan), changes his direction and focuses his attention on Cuba this time with Epicentro. While the island nation has been a constant subject for cinema for a long time, Sauper's film blends in the commentary on globalization and cinema history through the voices of extremely articulate and bright children. The result is a engrossing, intimate documentary that is poetic and playful as well as biting. This 2020 Sundance Grand Jury prize winner is seeing its virtual opening in the US on 8/28.

I caught him as he was traveling by rail in France. Even with bad reception and constant background noise, I was able to ask him questions about his filmmaking and the world wide pandemic we are experiencing right now.

It’s a crazy time we are living in. I was thinking that this worldwide pandemic seems like a good subject for Hubert Sauper, since you make films about globalization of the world. What do you make of the current state of the world?

Hubert Sauper: It is a crazy situation because the last three years I’ve been making this film about the beginning of cinema and Covid seems to be the end of cinema.

Yeah this is very much true.

The New York premier of the film was the night before the city shut down. I was locked out of New York and it was really crazy situation. So what do I think of it? I don’t really know what to think of this situation. Even what I talk about Epicentro, for us it was a poetic and fantastic way to communicate life and the quintessence of cinema is not just moving images but it’s a collective work and collective experience.

Right.

It’s a collective journey. And now it is questioned right? That’s the crazy thing. The thing is Covid doesn’t care about any of this human endeavor. So I really don’t know. There’s so much emphasis on where it comes from and every politician is using it as their gain. Again the reason why it was communicated so quickly was moving images that spread around the world. That’s the power of images.

I get the feeling that if any filmmaker could tackle this, you would be the one who can interpret the situation from a globalization angle.

One of the things I thought in the beginning of it was that I saw two patterns and posted two screenshots on my facebook page –One was a graph showing the spread of covid and the other of the international air traffic. It’s from a website called flight rada. And they were identical. It was almost synchronized. You click on flights and the Covid bubbles of the destinations of those flights blowing up. It is a global phenomenon. It’s very simple as that.

So you made two films on the effects of Colonial past and globalization in Africa (Darwin’s Nightmare and We Come as Friends), but this time it’s Cuba. Why Cuba?

I was interested in figuring out the ground zero of moving images where it became super powerful and important. And it led me to ‘Remember the Maine’ and I built it upon that. It was defacto of moving image industry and business were born. Cinema was just like any other technology. And it was used to drum up the support for the war.

I’m not saying your last films were not personal but Epicentro comes across as much more personal and intimate than your other work. Is there any personal relationship with Cuba?

Well, I’m not alone in saying that I love Cuba. I’m not the only one who is fascinated by Cuba. One of the things I am particularly fascinated by it is that it is a society that is very much isolated and extremely well educated. The roles it plays in political geopolitical arena, repeatedly is also extremely interesting. On top of that, it’s the Cubans’ reflections on the world that is so acute. Whenever I talked with and listened to them, it was a jaw dropping experience. Those little kids, Chigas, that I interacted daily--

The little prophets (the kids in Epicentro are credited as that on the credit roll).

Yes, they became friends for life! I talk with them on the phone constantly. Maybe it feels more personal because for three years of being there and making this kind of film, there’s no way not to be over-contact with your subjects and they are all over the place.

‘What the fuck am I doing here?’ was the question I wake up with every morning. You will have a café latte, which cost 3 times the average day salary of a person there. That alone is a great justification. That alone is cynical way of saying that Cuba is a paradise. It is a paradise if you have means. All these questions and paradoxes exist in Cuba. And that’s what interested me. I don’t have answers for these. I just ask questions.

I was thinking about that while watching the film. I mean, as a white European filmmaker making a film about colonialism and tourism in Cuba, how do you reconcile with that paradox? I find out from the movie that you were a son of an innkeeper in Austrian resort town.

How do I come to terms with the paradox of life? What I am saying is that the chief of Green Peace has flown more on airplane around the globe while talking about air traffic and its emissions. How do you…I mean… at best I am saying I’m a filmmaker and I’m not gonna apologize for making a film, you know?

Yep.

But of course there are situations that are very critical, for example, we are filming the photographer, poring in somebody’s backyard almost pushing the kids around to stay in focus and I am just another idiot behind the camera at that moment filming this other guy exploiting someone’s privacy. There is no difference between me and that guy in the eyes of Cuban people.

Yeah there is.

And there were about 30-40 people around us when we were there. My point is that the next day I showed them the footage and they were laughing about that footage. It was around my neighborhood where I was living and I asked them permission to shoot in advance and everything.

I was privileged to be paid by European Union to hang out in Cuba for two years.

Two years did you say?

I lived there for 3 years yes. 2 years teaching a class in film school so I could get a legal status and lodging, but all in all three years. I had a studio set up so I was writing, shooting and editing at the same time there. I’d shoot in the day and come back to the flat and edit at night.

Did you have a lot of footage to work with?

Yeah it was physically about a hundred to one.

Wow.

Right. About 200 hours of footage to make one movie.

It’s ok. I shot a lot of characters. But it’s complex process. How do you portray the psychology of empire. There are a lot of characters saying similar things but you try to get some different angles some are more eloquent than others and some are more interesting as characters. The characters are…I don’t know how to say it, sometimes it takes a form of casting. Sometimes it’s more true…. You are a cinema person. You write for cinema right?

So, I can tell you one thing which sets apart. You remember a group of children at night. One kid says I wanna chew down the other one while telling the story of Cuba, remember that?

Yes.

That was the moment, I met Lionelli for the first time in my life. Lionelli was among 10 kids who were mostly bigger than herself. She made herself to be heard. And we follow her after that: her figuring out herself in school and blah blah. But she was such a character and always wanted to be in front of the camera, she became my friend. And she became one of the figures in the film.

I love the scene where she asks you to sneak her and her friends in to the fancy hotel pool so she can swim.

“I need to pee.” As soon as she went into the pool. (laughs)

Why you like it is because at that point of the movie, you already know her and you realize that she has something to say and you feel that relationship. How do you say? Disobedience. Cuban Revolution is romanticized because of its disobedient spirit against the powerful. It’s her disobedient nature, going to the pool when she is not allowed to and pissing in the pool, I see the exact the same spirit.

By the way, I took a cab to the train station and she is all over Paris now (on the movie posters -Epicentro came out last week in Paris). It’s a kind of miracle. She wants to be a movie star and she wants to visit Paris. And she has done that now.

I really like your approach in Epicentro in weaving cinema history with Cuba. It is kind of epitomized by the presence of Oona Chaplin. The Grand daughter of Charlie and daughter of Geraldine. How did you get Oona to be involved?

Oona is a very close friend. She spent a part of her childhood in Cuba because her father’s refugee status. When Lionelli was watching Chaplin movie in the film, I hadn’t thought of Onna yet. That scene triggered me to call her. I sent her the footage to LA where she was working on Avatar movie. And she saw the footage and fell in love with the kids. So I said come on over and she did.

Wow, that’s awesome.

It shows that she is not only beautiful and talented, but a very free person. I think she enjoyed to be involved in it too. It was kind of a miracle too, having Oona coming out of nowhere watching her grandpa on the screen with the children on the rooftop in Cuba. It wasn’t in the script that I wrote originally. By the way, my first trip for Epicentro was not necessarily about Havana. It was the idea of Utopia and birth of cinema.

Well, I enjoyed the film a lot. I think it’s one of the best documentaries I’ve seen in a long time. But this pandemic is still raging. So stay safe and hopefully you can make a film about the Covid experience, maybe?

I think I’m gonna be OK, if we can keep this magic called cinema, going.


Epicentro opens virtually on 8/28. Please check Kino Lorber website for more info.

Interview: Crystal Moselle on Approaching The Wolfpack

Filmmaker Crystal Moselle is getting a lot of attention these days. Rightfully so, because her film The Wolfpack, about six brothers, all named after Hindu gods, growing up in the confines of their apartment, reenacting movies they saw on TV, in New York's Lower East Side, is most likely one of best documentaries you will see all year.

Even though it wasn't an ideal setting, due to her busy schedule, I had to go for a short phone interview with Moselle as she was traveling.

The Wolfpack won this year's Grand Jury Prize for US Documentary at Sundance this year and is getting limited release on 6/12, expanding nationwide on 6/19.

I'm gonna jump out and get a taxi right now.

Oh OK.

But I'm gonna walk out with you (on the phone) though. Don't worry, now I've talked about this movie so many times, I'm a little pro. (laughs.)

OK, excellent. Then let me begin. I'm pretty sure you've talked about how it all began many times. But for the people who don't know, can you tell me how you met the Angulo boys?

So I was walking down the First Avenue one day and these six boys walked past me. And I was completely intrigued by them. And I... you know they have like, long hair and they have this Reservoir Dogs thing happening. And I ran after them instinctively and asked them where they are from and they said Delancey Street. I told them that I haven't seen them around before. And they asked me what I did for a living and I said I was a filmmaker.  And they were like, "Oh, we are interested in the business of filmmaking."  And that's how the whole thing started. It was a very serendipitous thing.

I had no idea what their backstory was when I first met them. I thought they were really cool guys and there was this openness about them that was intriguing and.... So that's how the story started.

That's pretty wild. How long did it take for you to make the film? I mean you've known them for a long time now right?

I met them five years ago and I pretty much started filming here and there right away. And it became a regular full time thing after five month or so. From beginning to end it took about four and a half years.

It is quite remarkable how intimate the film is and the access you had into the lives of these boys. You have a group of very willing participants to tell their story and they invite you to their house to film and everything. I am wondering how their parents first thought of it, especially their father Oscar. He doesn't seem that friendly.

I think he saw an opportunity for his children. The boys really just... I mean, he didn't have a choice. They've already taken over the household- the power has shifted. So it wasn't a problem.

Did you feel threatened by his presence or ever feel that you were in any danger?

No. He'd been defeated by the time I got in there and it was a different scenario.

How did you connect with these guys so they could open up to you? Was it some elements from your life that they could relate to? Or how did you relate to these guys?

Through film.

So you guys talked about film non-stop.

Yeah, I mean eventually we talked about life and stuff but it was a really nice friendship that we had. I didn't know about their dark stories until some time after we became friends, so it was a learning experience.

When you heard their backstory, what was your reaction? Did you see the potential for a great film?

(hailing a cab) Yes. When I first started to uncover the clues, I realized that there was a fascinating backstory to the story. But I also felt protective over it because if it was gotten to the wrong hands, it could be exploitative. So I wanted to take care of it delicately.

Did you become a sort of a big sister for them?

Yeah, I think so.

The film has a really powerful cathartic ending. Sort of film within a film kind of thing.  Did you suggest any of it or did it come naturally?

What, the ending?

At the end in the documentary, they make a very personal movie about their lives-

Oh, no, no. They make all sorts of films all the time. We used the film that made sense for the ending. It's about what serves the narrative and I think they've gotten to certain point with that piece which is reflective of their lives.

There are six brothers and there is one sister (Vishnu) who's not really featured in the film. Was it a conscious decision not to include her from the beginning?

She is disabled. She has a Turner's Syndrome, so we couldn't interview her. I wanted to put her story within a film but the story of the boys and their first steps into the world was the main story. We tried to include her story as much as we could, but you can only tell so many stories within a film.

How they were brought up is really an interesting social experiment, when you think about it. It tells how resilient the boys are considering what they have gone through. I saw them at the Q & A session after the press screening the other day and was pleasantly surprised how well adjusted and smart they are.

Yeah, they totally are. I think it was their power of imagination- they were able to create the world they could escape to, that their film reenactments worked as some sort of therapy. Also they have a very loving, caring mother who really have been taking care of them. I think these are the reasons why they are OK.

AND they had such a drive. They knew what they will be doing and what their lives will be when they get out of the house. They knew exactly what they wanted to do. It was the first thing that they said to me when we first met on the street, "we are looking into the business of filmmaking!"

But we'll see how things will turn out for them. Their childhood might affect them in the future, who knows? We all have our problems. We all have some childhood traumas to some degree. I think their experiences were a little more intense. (laughs.)

Do you think the boys ever forgave their father?

They are estranged from their father. I think they tried but forgiveness comes from both parties and I don't think either side is ready yet. But we will see what the future holds.

I know you are extremely busy and getting a lot of attentions for this film but what's next for you?

I am helping the boys with their production company, Wolfpack pictures. I am also writing a script and continuing promoting this film around the world.

Awesome.

Pack of Wolves

The Wolfpack (2015) - Moselle

I've heard about many great eccentric, downright crazy family stories that have taken place in New York's Lower East Side (LES) through friends over the years. But none was as batshit crazy as the story of The Wolfpack.

The documentary tells a story of 6 brothers (and one sister) living in a squalid housing project in LES, Manhattan. Oscar Angulo, their stern, Hare Krishna father (named all his children after Hindu gods - Bhagavan, Govinda, Jagadisa, Krsna, Mukunda, Narayana and Vishnu) from Peru with a strong belief that New York is a dangerous, greedy place and not suitable for his children to socialize with the corrupt outside world, forbade them to go out of the apartment. Home schooled by Susan, their over-protective American mother, these bright but bored and restless boys have spent most of their captivity playing out countless movies they saw on VHS and DVD- their only contact with the outside world. They ingenuously made all the props and costumes out of cereal boxes and yoga mattes and videotaped their meticulous, word-by-word reenactments. I mean, isn't this too good of a documentary subject or what?

Serendipitously, Crystal Moselle, a filmmaker, happened to run into the Angulo pack on the street one day - one of the first days after they freed themselves from their father's grip. Smart and curious enough to find them interesting, she proceeded to engage them in a conversation. This is how this amazingly intimate, gotta-see-it-to-believe-it documentary was born. Equipped with wealth of materials (their home video movies of - Reservoir Dogs, Dark Knight, Pulp Fiction, etc.), and very willing and open collaboration from the Angulo boys, Moselle paints the coming-of-age story like no other. 



Watching The Wolfpack can be disorienting at times without any narration or prologue on the origins of the project. But the sheer access into the fascinating private life of the most unusual family makes it a compelling viewing experience nonetheless.

Coming in when the brothers started rebelling against and test their father's authority, Moselle weaves a somewhat chronological story of the boys' unusual upbringing. And she's there to document their many first time experiences - taking the subway train, going to a movie theater, swimming in the ocean, well, Coney Island, etc.



The boys' father, makes an appearance later in the film in Moselle's footage, admitting that what he had done to the kids might not have been the best thing, that his plan to go to Scandinavia where things are done right (he must have been thinking of their now failing welfare system), didn't work out and had his family marooned in New York permanently.

These likable boys and NY setting make the film very difficult to be seen as only an interesting social experiment that happened in nowhere land. It's a testament of human strength and adaptability in the changing environment. Even though they lived in instilled fear and misguided suspicion of the outside world, they found an escape in cinema and acted upon it ingeniously, thus creating their own universe without going insane where most people would have in the same circumstances. 



the wolfpack DK.JPGThere are a lot of poignant moments in The Wolfpack, as they embrace the outside world - they seem genuinely bewildered to see an apple orchard upstate for the first time, the ocean or even the sunlight. 

There is a film within a film moment which beautifully reflects lives of the Angulos. It's one of the many films the boys made but perhaps the most personal - about fear and beauty, directed by Bhagavan, the aspiring filmmaker, starring everyone, including Oscar, Susan and their sister Vishinu. While watching Bhagavan watching the production in front of him, you feel that these boys came out relatively unscathed from what must have been extremely difficult and frustrating childhood. You can sense that there is a bright future ahead of all of them.



The Angulo boys clearly want to tell their story and have faith in Moselle to convey it, giving her the full access into their lives.  The Wolfpack is a very unusual human drama that is both compelling and deeply moving. It's easily one of the most fascinating documentaries I've seen in recent years.

The Wolfpack opens in NY on June 12 at the Landmark Sunshine Cinemas and Film Society of Lincoln Center's Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and expands nationwide on June 19.