Early on in the brilliant and profoundly moving documentary Flee, Danish Filmmaker Jonas Poher Rasmussen, the director of the movie, asks the subject – an Afghan refugee known by the pseudonym Amin Nawabi to define the word “home.”

Lying back on a tapestry-covered day bed, his eyes close  much like an agonized human on a Freudian couch, to explain the word “home.”

Amin answers quickly: “a home is a place where you are safe.” Amin knows what he is talking about, his early childhood was idyllic, but then the realities of Afghanistan, one of the least safe places on the earth, intruded brutally.

His father was seized by the Muhadeen police and disappeared; he and his mother and two sisters joined tens of millions of refugees all over the world seeking haven any way they could. And some of the tracks were both horrific and doomed.

Amin is gay, which further complicated his life in Aghan and his family. He tells Rasmussen that having a gay child brings great shame on Afghan families.

The movie has a calm, gentle and intimate feel, even when what Amin goes through is wrenching, even devastating. Few western countries – where most refugees want to go – want them now. They fall to the mercy of ruthless, sometimes murderous “traffickers”, the journeys to safety are dangerous, even inhuman.

For most of us, refugees are just another endless TV story; their suffering has become routine and tends to sail over the heads of most Americans.

We have lost the capacity to feel the pain and suffering of these people.

Donald Trump and his movement shattered the long and wondrous bond between America and the refugees who flocked here from all over the world for centuries, most of them welcomed and safe here. It broke my heart watching this excellent movie and realizing once again how our country gave away its soul and spirit by slamming the door on so many poor and desperate people.

We have lost our moral bearing and turned our backs on the very idea of being a shining light and haven for the hopeless. Today we blame the refugees for their troubles and ours. We no longer see them as enriching us but stealing from our own lives and wealth. For me, that was as difficult to see as Amin’s awful suffering.

Fortunately for Amim, Denmark, where he eventually ended up, is a much kinder and more compassionate place. He found refugee there finally – he had to pretend everyone in his family was dead to be admitted to the country — and went on to be a successful researcher and academic, although we can’t – for good reasons – know his real identity.

Rasmussen and Anim were best friends as teenagers when Anim emigrated to Denmark after brutal and painful stops along the way. He spent several years in a cruel and corrupt Russia, a country driven from Afghanistan by the U.S. supported Muhadeen, who went on to become the Taliban, who drove us out.

Amin, talking almost as a patient finally talking at times openly to a therapist while lying on a couch, tells a gripping story of loss, dislocation, and tragedy. But it is also a story of courage, family love, sacrifice, and miraculous rebirth and re-invention. The movie grabbed me by the throat, and I didn’t let go until the very end.

Flee takes the refugee story and boils it down brilliantly to the experience of one person and one family, which brings us deeply into the account as it occurs and is recounted. The movie doesn’t present Amin’s story as a political issue but as the story of a human being. It’s almost impossible not to relate to that.

This is not the familiar news video we see on the news of drowning and traumatized people; it’s a very personal and relatable story of one person being tested in the worst possible way, which somehow finds a way to get to his safe place.

Amin recently got married and came to terms with his suffering and trauma. Rasmussen used animation and a few newsreels to tell the refugee story in a way I have never seen it said, certainly not in a movie.

The United Nations says more than 60 million refugees worldwide seek asylum from civil war, genocide, and brutality. The United States, the famed nation of refugees, took in a few thousand over the past few years; we are the ones who have lost our way. The Biden administration promises to take in more.

I am the grandchild of refugees; I know this story too well, second-hand and from afar. But I felt this movie deeply and recommend it highly. Apart from its message, it’s a genuinely great movie, put together in the most creative and practical ways. There isn’t a misstep or false note in it.

The animation was a brave choice by Asmussen, who weaves the audio portions with his gentle and probing questions and sets them to gorgeous and beautifully drawn sequences that become more immersive and revealing than even most live-action films could be.

He intersperses  Amin’s memories with vintage newsreel real-life footage in Kabul and Moscow.

This innovative and hypnotic storytelling is a thing that only great movies can do, and this is a great movie.

We enter not only the experience but the damaged and healing consciousness of a fellow human being, and it doesn’t tell us or beat us over the head. The movie makes us feel another reality, Amin’s reality, which is the very definition of empathy.

With empathy comes a feeling; we are standing in his shoes every minute. By the end of the movie, I had a deep appreciation for what safety means.

Rasmussen puls off a miracle here,  because Although Amin’s story is as terrifying as any horror thriller – this is not a warm portrait of humanity – but the story ends up being almost surprisingly exhilarating. It’s quite a feat to pull that off.

And I find the animation, the gentle questioning, and the soft, reluctant, but honest answers comforting, not disturbing. My head was spinning when I left the theater and in the best possible way. This is a horrific story very gently told.

This is also a refreshingly disciplined film,  90 minutes, every second was full of feeling and revelation, and it didn’t go one a second longer than it should. The movie was initially marketed as an art film but is making a big splash and released in theaters around the country.

The movie does contain disturbing images and some strong language. It is told with sub-titles over Dari, Danish, and Russian.