T he 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.

Soraya is hoping to join her mother, who left for Austria after the death of Soraya’s father when she was a child. She winds up back in the Iranian capital, with her violent husband. Of Afghan heritage, she watches the Taliban takeover on TV – and over-identifies with the stricken populace desperate to board a US plane. Gearing up for the next escape attempt, if she can dodge being beaten by her partner, the Turkish border police offer more of the same.…