 A film in three minutes, Flea. What do we do if we felt it was impossible to truly embrace our lives and the lives of our loved ones in the present when we felt such shame about the journey that got us there? Are the ghosts from our memories something to run away from or do we always have to face up to them at some point? In Jonas Bohr Asmusen's 2021 animated documentary Flea such questions are addressed by the film's subject Amin Nawabi, a former Afghani refugee who now resides in Denmark with his male partner. Nawabi's life, from his early childhood in Kabul to his family's traumatic fleeing to Russia and later Europe, is depicted in an animated interview style reminiscent of Ari Follman's 2008 award-winning documentary Waltz with Bashir. But Flea stands very much as its own work where a mixture of animation styles and archival footage create a mixed media visual interpretation of Amin's past from the 1980s to the present day. Rather than lessening the horrific experiences Amin's family went through, the animation in fact heightens the emotional impact of his story and adds an extra layer of solemnity to the brutality and suffering he and so many other refugees like him went through when they were smuggled by unscrupulous traffickers from one country to the next. This is assisted greatly by the documentary score composed by Uno Helmusen who makes excellent but somber use of violin strings and digitized percussion during the film's darker moments. But this is thankfully also juxtaposed in places by a selection of 80s and 90s pop hits which enable us to empathise with Amin on a familiar western level as he begins to also discover his attraction to men thanks in no small part to a poster of Jean-Claude Van Damme in his bedroom. If you had little or next to no opinion on the subject of human trafficking, you will after seeing Flea. The desperation of Amin's family and the harrowing journey they undertake is at times incredibly difficult to witness. It reminded me of how easy it is to forget the suffering so many have experienced in far removed war-torn nations like Afghanistan, a country whose tragic history is all the more relevant to us due to recent events. But making Amin a cartoon in no way infantilises his incredible journey. It instead humanises him in a way that perhaps we would become too desensitised to if the documentary had been presented as live-action. Flea is the first film to be nominated for Best Documentary, Best Foreign Film and Best Animated Feature at this year's Oscars. And it may win all three, but that shouldn't distract from how Amin's story can be replicated a million times over by displaced victims of war, corruption and famine. On that level, the film is not just a beautiful, life-affirming tale of one man's struggle but also an important reminder to look past the fear some wish for us to have for those seeking a better life and see the true soul beneath.