Michael's Movie Grade: A-
An absorbing and completely unique animated documentary.
This film tells the story of a man who has spent his life running away, hiding and lying just to live his life. The movie traces his life from being a young child in Afghanistan to escaping to Denmark. While it may seem strange to make a documentary as an animated movie, it really enhances this movie. This is because as well as the interview scenes there are also dramatized moments from his life. In live action documentaries, these type of reenactment scenes come off as fake and take one out of the movie. However, when used in an animated film they feel completely natural and make the film feel more real and relatable. These scenes are easily the highlight of the movie and many of them are completely and utterly moving. While the animation was used in many ways to keep our main subject anonymous, there is little doubt that it also made the filmmaking flow much better. Despite the obvious political content of this film, the movie never stops to preach to us or has any sermonizing dialogue. Instead, it simply tells its story and lets us become emotionally involved in how this political content affects our main character. This is done extremely well and there are moments here which are very emotionally moving from his childhood memories of being on the run at a young age to him coming to terms with his own sexuality.
All in all this is a great film and a unique cinematic experience.
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