EXCLUSIVE: David Borenstein, the Oscar-winning director of Mr. Nobody Against Putin, is coming on board a documentary that’s a contender for next year’s Academy Awards.
Borenstein announced he will serve as an executive producer on A Fox Under a Pink Moon, the film directed by and Soraya Akhlaghi that has won awards at festivals around the world, from IDFA in Amsterdam to ZagrebDox in Croatia and Full Frame in Durham, NC. Akhlaghi, an Afghan refugee in Iran and a talented young artist, created all the artwork in the documentary and shot the visuals, much of it on her phone, documenting her experience as a child bride struggling to escape to freedom.
Oskouei Film Production
“Mehrdad Oskouei has spent decades making intimate documentaries about people the world prefers not to see. In Soraya Akhlagi, a 16-year-old Afghan refugee living in Tehran, he found not just a subject but a co-director. Together they made something neither of them could have made alone,” Borenstein writes in a statement provided exclusively to Deadline. “The film is an electric first-person account of Soraya’s attempts to escape to Europe, and an undercover filming project that takes you inside her abusive arranged marriage with almost unbearable intimacy.”
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Borenstein adds, “Some of these images I will never get out of my head. I don’t want to.”
Borenstein calls Soraya a “revelation” and a “preternaturally gifted artist.” He observes, “The world gave her a very dark place to live in, and she turned around and made art out of it. She is a radical. She is punk rock. Her haunting, beautiful sculpture, painting, and cinematography give the film so much of its tone, weaving her joy, her hopes, and her pain into its fabric. At its heart, this is a film about resilience through creativity, made by a 16-year-old who refuses to be reduced to her circumstances.”
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Like A Fox Under a Pink Moon, Borenstein’s Mr. Nobody Against Putin involved a cinematic collaboration. His co-director on that project was Pavel “Pasha” Talankin (the “Mr. Nobody” of the title) who documented his experience as a videographer and activities coordinator at a primary school in Karabash, Russia. Pasha’s footage illustrated how the Kremlin tried to impose a nationalistic education plan on young students after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, an indoctrination scheme that Talankin chose to defy.
Speaking of the teamwork of Oskouei and Akhlagi, Borenstein writes, “I am fascinated by this kind of storytelling, where an unorthodox collaboration across vastly different worlds gets you somewhere no conventional film could go. It’s something I explored in Mr. Nobody Against Putin, and something Mehrdad and Soraya have taken somewhere entirely their own. What they’ve made is piercing, and it inspires me as much as anything I’ve seen in years.”
Courtesy of David Borenstein
Borenstein joins an executive producing roster that includes Rebecca Lichtenfeld and Chandra Jessee for InMaat Foundation, Siavesh Jamali, and Tony Tabatznik. Mehrdad Oskouei and Soraya Akhlaghi directed the film; Oskouei produced the documentary and co-wrote it with Siavesh Jami. The film’s cinematography is by Soraya Akhlaghi; animation is by Mohammad Lotfali. Amir Adibparvar edited the film; the score is by Afshin Azizi.
At IDFA, A Fox Under a Pink Moon won the festival’s top prize – Best Film in International Competition. Jurors Eric Hynes, Isabelle Glachant, Maya Daisy Hawke, Michel K. Zongo, and Myriam Sassine wrote in their citation, “This film opens a window onto the power of art and hope during the difficult times through which we’re living. Through masterful cinematography often filmed in dangerous conditions, and the protagonist’s radiant energy, this empowering collaboration between an established filmmaker and a young new artist enables her to reclaim identity amid exile and domestic violence, to bloom despite repression, and to find solace through creation. A self-portrait that witnesses the growth of an Afghan artist whose work will continue to resonate.”
The documentary has an energetic and enthusiastic backer in Borenstein. He writes, “I love A Fox Under a Pink Moon… Soraya deserves the biggest audience we can find for her. I intend to help find it.”
You can watch the trailer for A Fox Under a Pink Moon here:
