Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym), a 36-year-old, high-achieving academic, grapples with a painful secret he has kept hidden for 20 years, one that threatens to derail the life he has built for himself and Casper, his soon-to-be husband. As a child in the 1990s, Amin was forced to flee his homeland of Afghanistan and the persecution of the Mujahadeen; he agrees to tell his remarkable personal narrative to the director Jonas Poher Rasmussen, his close friend and high-school classmate, on the condition that his identity not be revealed. To fulfil his wish, Rasmussen reconstructs Amin’s story in this hybrid documentary, using striking animation to not only protect the young man but also enhance his tale, bending time and memory to recount a visceral, poetic, death-defying journey dictated by deception, loneliness, and a relentless will to survive.

Notes by David O Mahony