A raw fly-on-the-wall self-portrait from a young woman in a world of trouble, Fox Under a Pink Moon is an emotionally charged collaboration between veteran Iranian documentary maker Mehrdad Oskouei and his teenage niece, Soraya Akhalaghi. Essentially a video diary filmed on cellphones, but enhanced with hand-crafted visual artwork and animation, the core footage was all shot by its spirited star over a five-year period, with Oskouei co-directing remotely. Born and raised in Iran as part of the Afghan refugee diaspora, Soraya spends much of the film’s kinetic, frenetic, jump-cutting run-time trying to illegally cross the border from Turkey into Europe, dreaming of a reunion with her long-absent mother in Austria.
Touching on exile, displacement, domestic violence and the brutal close-up realities of people-smuggling gangs, Fox Under a Pink Moon could have been a gruelling, issue-heavy film. But instead it is a mostly life-affirming exercise in empathy, bleak in parts but also bursting with creative imagination and defiant optimism in the face of impossibly steep odds. Of course, it helps that Soraya is a natural screen star: young, beautiful, artistically gifted and wiser than her tender years, with a flair for lyrical insights into geopolitics. Following its world premiere at IDFA this week, this formally bold documentary should have further festival and niche sales appeal thanks to its plucky protagonist, stylistic flair and timely themes around gender inequality and immigration,
We first meet Soraya in Istanbul in 2019, where she is in the middle of a “game”, as refugees call their attempted border crossings. Like most of the escape attempts in the film, it is a hectic blur of extreme discomfort and nail-biting tension, hunger and sickness, with police beatings, bandit attacks and high failure risk all part of the deal. Between botched escape attempts, Soraya returns to Tehran and fills us in on her tragic back story. Her beloved father died when she was five. Her mother fled to Europe, and the pair have not seen each other for years. Meanwhile, she is locked in a loveless marriage with hot-tempered, violent Ali “Ever since my father died, I have gotten used to being beaten,” she shrugs as she displays her latest black eye and bruised shoulder on camera. At one point, she confesses to feelings of suicidal depression, but leaves them opaque.
One key lifeline that sustains Soraya is her richly creative inner life. A talented painter and sculptor, she and Oskouei make her artworks central to the film, not just as decorative counterpoint but as symbolic chorus motifs woven into the wider narrative fabric. In collaboration with animator Mohammad Lotfali, her stylised fox and clown paintings become brightly coloured Expressionist tableaux, surreal and macabre and highly imaginative, like miniature Tim Burton movies. These striking artworks also serve as avatars for her distressed emotionally state. “I don’t talk any more, I paint my pains”, she claims at one point. “I turn my fears into a demon sculpture”.
Often these animated graphics also serve as dark commentary on wider background events, including refugee boats singing in the Mediterranean, and escalating violence in Afghanistan after the chaotic withdrawal of US forces in 2021. One of her animated artworks angrily depicts the Taliban’s brutal lynching of comedian Nazar “Khasha” Mohammad, another desperate Afghans falling to their deaths after swarming the last US military plane to fly out of Kabul. “Ordinary people have no place in this world,” she concludes. “No plane is waiting for them.”
Episodic and disjointed, Fox Under a Pink Moon chronicles a messy work-in-progress life story in an appropriately scrambled, unvarnished manner. The lack of explanatory context will likely frustrate some viewers, and certainly there are some niggling omissions here. The final credits include significant updates on Soraya’s current location, marriage and family issues which all deserve more than just a perfunctory mention. This story needs a closing coda, or even a sequel. Maybe Soraya will direct one herself, bursting with darkly beautiful animated visuals, and Tim Burton as executive producer.
Directors: Mehrdad Oskouei, Soraya Akhalaghi
Screenwriters: Mehrdad Oskouei, Amir Adibparvar
Cinematography: Soraya Akhalaghi
Animation: Mohammad Lotfali
Editing: Amir Adibparvar
Sound: Soraya Akhalaghi
Sound Design: Hossein Ghoorchian
Music: Afshin Azizi
Producer: Mehrdad Oskouei
Executive producers: Siavash Jamali, Tony Tabatznik, Rebecca Lichtenfeld, Chandra Jessee
Production companies: Oskouei Films (Iran), InMaat Foundation (US)
World sales: CAT&Docs
Venue: IDFA (International Competition)
In Farsi, Dari, Turkish
76 minutes
