The Son and the Moon

Roja Pakari / Denmark / 2024 / World Premiere / 87 min

Danish-Iranian filmmaker Roja is facing the most difficult period of her 36-year-old life. She is pregnant with her son Oskar and diagnosed with cancer. In the midst of all this, she must try to find herself. ‘The Son and the Moon’ is her filmic journey recorded over six dramatic years, where she documents her everyday life and her thoughts on living with a disease that can cost her everything. How do you live when your precious time on Earth could end too soon? Roja, however, is the last person to feel sorry for herself. She immerses herself in being present, and then she sets out to map her Iranian heritage and her family’s dramatic history, which opened a new chapter when her politically engaged parents fled Iran after the revolution and ended up in Denmark. ‘The Son and the Moon’ is never a film in the shadow of death. It is a love story when you least expect it, and a brave (self-)portrait of a woman who is at once a mother, wife, daughter and, not least, an artist.