FLEE ’S KASPER

Flee — the first movie to earn Oscar nominations for best animated feature, documentary feature and international feature (representing Denmark) — follows pseudonymous subject “Amin,” who, preparing to marry his husband, Kasper, shares his extraordinary escape from Afghanistan as a child refugee. His fiance’s look in the movie, released by Neon and Participant, is based on the real Kasper. But because Amin is designed to protect his identity, “we tried to be as truthful to the characters as possible, but at the same time change the way they looked so that they [kept their] anonymity,” says writer-director Jonas Poher Rasmussen.

He provided character designer Mikkel Sommer with references for a look, though the character is quite different from the real person. “He has a different hair color and he doesn’t wear glasses and he doesn’t have a little mustache,” the director says, adding that his style of clothing was also changed, though is still period-accurate.

He adds, “Everything in the film had been shot on video as well, so [animation director Kenneth Ladekjaer] could grab gestures and expressions from that and put it into the animation … because authenticity is so crucial to the story, so it should still feel like a real person.”