30/04/2026 - Mehrdad Oskouei’s film about an Afghan refugee, which took over five years to make, proves that even in the darkest night, there is always light emanating from the moon

The title of the recent documentary by Mehrdad Oskouei is a very poetic one, suggesting that the entire film will be equally subtle and light. It is not. A Fox Under a Pink Moon, which had its world premiere in November last year at IDFA and has just won the Big Stamp Award at ZagrebDox (see the news), explores the grim realities of an Afghan refugee, who has been trying for years to get to Europe and reconnect with her mother, now successfully settled in Austria. When we meet the protagonist, Soraya Akhlaghi, who shot all of the footage with her mobile phone, created the drawings used for the animated parts and has a co-director credit, she is 16. Regardless of her tender age, she is already experienced in the “game”, which, in refugee jargon, means attempting to illegally cross the border. Despite losing, she keeps on playing. We will follow her for the next five years and get a closer look at her living conditions as well as her emotional landscape, which quickly converts the audience from passive viewers into supporters of the protagonist.

While waiting to “win the game”, Soraya crafts sculptures and draws. Her artwork or, rather, art world is inhabited by four important characters, each of them with a symbolic meaning, deciphered for us in her voice-over. Sometimes she records messages to Mehrdad Oskouei, who met Soraya while he was preparing a different project. He made A Fox Under a Pink Moon completely remotely and chose to be a very discreet, almost invisible, auteur and give the limelight to the voice of his protagonist; it’s a strategy he has also employed in his previous works.

Oskouei’s artistic approach manifests itself in the editing – he selected a mere 76 minutes from a few hundred hours of material. He builds his film on contrast, interweaving scenes from the mundane and harsh daily life of Soraya (who is also a victim of domestic abuse) and sequences that show her artworks in different ways. She narrates the film on and off camera, talking about her hopes and dreams as well as describing the arduous journeys to the border. This, together with the soundscape, often isolating the sounds of her breathing, facilitates the forming of a bond with her. Soraya is a delicate, charming and funny young woman, but also a sober thinker. Her comments about how Afghans were selected to board the last US plane leaving the country, after Joe Biden decided to withdraw the troops, as well as those about the fate of women are impactful in their brevity and directness.  

A Fox Under a Pink Moon gives us an insight into what happened to her people after the Taliban took power in Afghanistan in 2021. In a way, the movie complements two other recent documentaries that show the realities of those who stayed in the country or who support the new rules: The Secret Reading Club of Kabul by Elina Hirvonen and Shakiba Adil, which recently won the NORDIC:DOX competition at CPH:DOX; and Kabul, Between Prayers by Aboozar Amini, which had its world premiere out of competition at Venice last year.

Oskouei’s film is not simply another portrait of the precarious lives of those who have had to abandon their motherland, capitalising on their hardships and traumas. With compassion, it humanises a crisis too often reduced to the numbers of illegal crossings and the death tolls of the “players”. Additionally, without being pretentious or kitschy, A Fox Under a Pink Moon reminds us that the human spirit is resolute in its will to survive, and that even in the darkest of times, there are many shades of pink shining through it.

A Fox Under a Pink Moon – a co-production between Iran, France, the UK, the USA and Denmark – was produced by Dreamlab Films and Oskouei Films. CATS&Docs handles its world sales.