BLACK RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT – 2025, DreamLab Films, 139 min. The latest film from Iranian master Shahram Mokri (FISH & CAT, CARELESS CRIME) is another mysterious M.C. Escher-like meditation on reality and illusion, doubles and doppelgängers and uncanny synchronicities, involving stories-within-stories set during production of a film by a director named “Shahram” – already blurring the lines between film and reality. Guns play a strange and mystical part in BLACK RABBIT: on the film set, we meet armorer Babak, played by the great Iranian actor Babak Karimi (FISH & CAT, A SEPARATION). This production marks his 40th, and he’s paranoid he won’t get through the day without a terrible accident (his mentor was killed in an explosion on his 40th film.) "I've discovered something important: there's a revolver here hell bent on revenge,” he murmurs. The other major storyline involves Sara (Hasti Mohammaï), who is kept as a prisoner inside her house by her husband while she recovers from a near-fatal car accident. She's wrapped in bandages like Elsa Lanchester in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN and gives off a foul odor from her wounds. Slowly, fantastical elements begin to bleed through, like waking dreams intruding on the conscious world: an enormous prop Coffee Cup moves about the set by itself; inanimate objects talk amongst themselves about the Italian gun that's arrived to take revenge; and an aspiring actress gives an audition in which she does magic, causing a white rabbit and a black rabbit to appear. “The magic of time weaves together apparently unrelated events. A story of women seeking to escape their cocooned lives. A story of objects possessing a soul, deciding when and where to play a role. A quest to make dreams come true, linking these stories together thanks to the wonder of cinema.” – Shahram Mokri. In Tajiki and Russian with English subtitles.
Special Features
Three ultra-rare early Mokri short films:
The Dragonfly Storm (2002, 15m)
Limits of the Circle (2005, 15m)
Ando-C (2007, 15m)
New audio commentary by film programmer and critic Tori Potenza
New visual essay "The Maze: Entrances and Exits in Black Rabbit, White Rabbit" by Stephen Broomer (13m)
New wrap artwork by Beth Morris
Deluxe Edition Bonus Content
Hard slipcase featuring new artwork by Brian Level
60-page illustrated book
New essay by Walter Chaw
New essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas
New essay by Michelle Kisner