A Fox Under a Pink Moon review – Iranian teen refugee paints boldly imaginative self-portrait

Soraya Akhlaghi filmed her perilous flight from Iran and precarious new life over five years on her phone, reassembled here with yearning animations

The world feels like an overwhelmingly forlorn place in this striking refugee self-portrait, shot on smartphone by Soraya Akhlaghi over five years and assembled remotely by co-director Mehrdad Oskouei. Fleeing a dead-end life as a Tehran maid, Soraya – who is just 16 at the beginning of the film – starts out at an Istanbul asylum centre. Most “games” – as border-crossing sorties with people-smugglers are euphemistically called – end in failure in the wilderness at the hands of hostile law enforcement officers.