A young Afghan artist records her tough, clandestine journey out of Iran on her smartphone and imagines herself anew in this partly animated tale, the Best Film winner at the world’s largest documentary festival in Amsterdam.
A compelling, shape-shifting blend of thriller and dark fairy tale.
A Fox under a Pink Moon 2025
Roobah va Mah soorati
The magic of cinema comes not only from a creative spark; it also requires a harnessing of resources. Independent Iranian documentarian Mehrdad Oskouei has at times acted as a bridge for those who have been physically shut off from sharing their inner worlds with an audience. He made his acclaimed prior film, Sunless Shadows, from footage shot by female inmates of a juvenile detention centre in Iran.
Now, he has collaborated with Afghan visual artist Soraya, starting when she was sixteen, over years of her multiple attempts on the undocumented migrant route to cross from Iran to Europe to join her mother. Freedom came to mean not only fleeing hardship in Iran but also escaping marriage to a violent husband. Her powerful sculptures and drawings, beautifully brought to life as animations, are her way to process her disorienting experiences and assert her fierce determination and identity.
She is often accompanied in them by a fox, a creature that nurtures her intelligence and independence, amid the uncertainty of journeys and pushbacks, which she candidly shot on her mobile phone.
- Carmen Gray