The Radio of Cinema

Abstract

Film Quarterly columnist Bilal Qureshi explores the radio origins of Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s Flee, the first film to ever be nominated for an Oscar for best documentary feature, best animated feature, and best international feature film. Trained as a radio journalist who aspired to use sound to immerse the listener in images, Qureshi finds inspiration in Flee’s unique and extraordinary merging of radio and film. Relating the true story of an Afghan refugee’s arrival in Denmark after his escape from the Taliban’s first siege of Kabul in 1989, Flee began as a radio documentary compiled from conversations between Rasmussen and “Amin,” the alias chosen by his childhood friend to protect his privacy. Animators only began visualizing the story once the radio cut was locked. While there is a topical urgency that undoubtedly makes this film of migration, loss, and war “important,” there’s more: Flee is a master class in intimacy and immersion in the form of a radio film.