A Fox Under a Pink Moon
(Iran/Denmark/France, 77 min.)
Dir. Soraya Akhalaghi; Mehrdad Oskouei
Prod. Mehrdad Oskouei
Special Presentations (Canadian premiere)
Soraya Akhalaghi’s art takes many forms. The young Afghan artist resides in limbo in Tehran with hopes of reuniting with her mother in Europe. However, various circumstances keep her exiled in Iran, so she finds an outlet for her emotions in the creative process. As she moulds papier mâchée into a demon sculpture, she expels fears from her body. The eerie figure she creates embodies a sense of release. It looks as if a weight’s been lifted from Soraya by mixing egg cartons with water and shaping it into a symbol for her anxiety.
Her pain, meanwhile, takes the form of a clown. She draws this figure instead of sculpting him with goopy cardboard. The clown appears frequently in A Fox Under a Pink Moon, perhaps more often than any of Soraya’s avatars do. The figure can’t quite turn the artist’s frowns upside down, but he tries the best he can.
Sometimes Soraya seeks guidance from a fox, who appears under the dreamy pink moon that lends the film its title. The fox and the moon join forces to give Soraya hope. While the clown generally appears in standalone sequences that are fully animated, the fox and the pink moon enter the frames of vérité footage shot exclusively on Soraya’s iPhone. They artfully blend her reality with the escape she finds through the creative process in this moving and frequently riveting portrait made in exile.
A Fox Under a Pink Moon adds to a growing body of stories about the global migration crisis by offering a longitudinal confessional portrait. It sits comfortably in conversation with Sundance prize winner One in a Million, which charts a decade-long survival story of a family of Syrian refugees seen primarily through the eyes of a young daughter as she comes of age in Germany. Both films offer gripping and intimate windows into the asylum process as both docs feature young women escaping their environments with hopes for a better life in Europe. However, One in a Million tells a story of a woman who arrives at her destination. A Fox Under a Pink Moon shares a window into life in limbo as Soraya’s repeated attempts to flee prove unsuccessful.
Formally, the docs distinguish themselves as Fox draws entirely from footage that Soraya created herself. Working with director Mehrdad Oskouei over five years, the film captures Soraya’s growth from 16 years old. As she frequently turns the camera upon herself in TikTok-style confessionals, her selfies reveal a face that, while young, reflects a hard life.
“I am used to being beaten,” Soraya explains. She tells how her mother left her with an uncle after fleeing to Austria. Instead of protecting his ward, though, the uncle beat Soraya. A sense of hope comes when she marries very young, but the violence only escalates. Soraya’s husband, Ali, whose face remains blurred throughout, doubles down with his fists. Fox features brutal evidence of these beatings, which erupt at random. The footage stings hardest when it presents only the audio of Soraya’s screams with a cut to her swollen face as she creates a new artwork in the aftermath.
The camera turns outwards to observe different forms of violence, including punches both emotional and financial, as Soraya tries to flee with other asylum seekers. She captures footage of ill-fated boat rides and dangerous treks through the mountains where traffickers abandon them and looters track their every turn. The film evokes a sense of agency promised by the artistic tools on display. Her camera becomes a protective tool as much as it is an artistic one during these bold attempts.
Soraya’s group later finds temporary refuge by the Turkish border, but it’s another aborted journey. She trades some bedbug bites for drawings left on the walls of the sparse shelter. Both images offer expressions of pain.
A Fox Under a Pink Moon affords Soraya another artistic outlet as she becomes a creative agent in documenting her own story. It’s a frank and poetic exploration of what it means to feel constantly beat down by life, but having the strength to pick yourself up. Premiering in Toronto months after its award-winning debut at IDFA, however, this portrait of a woman caught in an abusive cycle in Tehran arguably packs a more potent sting through the violence that hit the region after the cameras stopped rolling.
