Feb 1, 2021

Neon lands North America right to documentary "Escape" at Sundance

Here's something that doesn't happen very often: an animated feature has built up major buzz and found a buyer at Sundance. Neon has picked up North American rights to Flee, Jonas Poher Rasmussen's documentary about a refugee, for an undisclosed seven-figure sum (which according to Variety was right around a million dollars).

The film tells the story of Amin Nawabi (a pseudonym), who fled from Afghanistan to Denmark as a child. He has found happiness in the country as an adult, but a secret he's been keeping for decades threatens to ruin his life. Nawabi co-wrote the film with Rasmussen (who has previously made live-action and hybrid documentaries).

Flee was one of the four animated features selected at Cannes last year. At Sundance, it debuted on opening night in the World Documentary Competition and has received strong reviews.

Actors Riz Ahmed (Sound of Metal) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Black Hawk Down) executive-produced the film. Monica Hellström and two-time Oscar nominee Signe Byrge Sørensen produced the doc via Final Cut for Real, and the co-producers are animation studio Sun Creature (Denmark), Vivement Lundi! (France), Mostfilm (Sweden), Mer Film (Norway), Arte (France), and Vpro (Netherlands).

Neon's catalogue skews toward arthouse titles and prestige award contenders, and includes many international titles. The company distributed Parasite, which won the Oscar for best picture last year. Flee is its first animated film. No release date has been announced.

Here's what the critics have to say: