BLACK RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT (Shahram Mokri 2025)

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SHAHRAM MOKRI: BLACK RABBIT, WHITE RABBIT (2026)

Motion pictures

TRAILER

"A film armorer's concerns about a real gun, an aspiring actress demanding an audition, and Sara's post-crash revelation of a conspiracy lead these strangers' paths to cross." You'll need that blurb description, although those are easy parts to remember of a complicated film about filmmaking that is in constant motion and constant interweaves parts of itself which it overlaps, repeats, and playfully repeats again: these points are only part of what's going on. This is a film school fever dream of a movie. Those who like cinematic games and films about film will enjoy Black Rabbit, White Rabbit the most.

It has been called "a Möbius strip-like" film; the password of the screener I watched was "Escher." This is for those who like to think about and talk about a movie and care about that experience above and beyond the experience of watching it, which may very well be a bit of a bore, first time through. The title may suggest David Lynch, and two giant rabbits do appear toward the end off in the distance, but this is Lynchian without quite having the distinctive Lynchian style or texture. For others, at the worst, this will only seem sophomoric and annoying on a large scale. It could have been in the Lincoln Center New Directors/New Films Series or Film Comment Selects. It is not for the festival - sorry, not quite; not for the mainstream.

A summary evaluation by Siddhant Adlakha in his Variety review shows how critics approach this movie: "When it’s all said and done," Adlakha writes, "the playfulness on display in 'Black Rabbit, White Rabbit' is quite remarkable" - but then he finishes the sentence with: "even if the story’s contorting framework seldom amounts to much, beyond drawing attention to itself." This is thoroughly ambivalent: It's "remarkable" but "seldom amounts to much." It's "inviting," but "meandering."

That's a bit contradictory, but perhaps basically right. There haven't been many filmmakers who have gone to so much trouble to develop so many interwoven themes through dialogue and movement all on a series of large sound stages. But the effect is prolix and borderline tedious. These are ideas that might work amusingly if presented in a theatrical play, with a lighter, wittier touch, and in a shorter runtime. Brevity, remember, is the soul of wit.

Languages fascinate me, so I was intrigued by the exotic interweaving of languages, Tajik, Russian, and Persian that makes up the dialogue of Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, with a bit of Italian and even some pure gibberish added on top of that. The logic is this: the plot centers on a film set in Tajikistan where a remake of a classic Iranian film is being produced, with storylines involving a prop gun, a car accident, and an audition. The film is a Tajikistan/UAE co-production. There are several directors who are deemed to look so alike the crew members wandering about confuse them, and they speak different languages. The remaking scene by scene fits filmmaker Mokri's interest in doubling, and the inclusion of a major scene where a dramatic speaker before an audience is assassinated by pistol shot fits the theme of semi-comic danger. (There is also a shot unseen in a shop at the beginning, as a prelude, and that is one of the most memorable moments.) The whole idea is very Nabokovian, and that scene parallels that of the assassination of Nabokov's father while giving a political speech, a scene that recurs in multiple, often comical forms in Nabokov's fiction.

Crew members wandering around. Ah, yes. That is what people are constantly doing in Black Rabbit, White Rabbit. Did I already say this? If nothing else, this film is in constant motion. It interprets the idea of "motion picture" literally and in that feels like an early film when the makers were excited by the basic elements of the new art form. The default mode is for the camera to follow one person around as he looks for some other person or wanders into people. One of the best transitional devices is for the camera to focus on the back of one character, then seamlessly slip onto the back of another, going in a different direction, pursuing a different goal, at a different time. The effect of the film studio setting is to create a film where cast and crew are continually waiting around for their moment, waiting for the shoot to begin. And sometimes they do begin to shoot or instructions are shouted to everyone on set. I was amused at one point to be reminded that the Farsi word for "Action" - when they're not just saying "Action" is "Harakaat," which in Arabic means "movements". Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is a movie that never takes a breather.

Perhaps the image, scene, and character that stay with me are of the woman who appears early on in the film wrapped in bandages (like a mummy) following a near-fatal car accident. This is Sara (Hasti Mohammaï), whose bandages are said to stink and be in dire need of changing and a ring of light around her feet signals people to keep off. At the end she finally appears without makeup, and appears to be after all quite radiant and beautiful. Or is that an the daughter of a lead actress, who throughout the film has been wandering around (ike everyone else) hoping to get an audition? (She has brought along no CV; she doesn't think she needs one.) Sara is an example of the lack of division between "real" and "fictional." She and her story are part of a film set, but the line is never quite drawn.

Sara's husband is Bezhan (Bezhan Davlyatov), a gray-haired grump. As time goes on she comes to believe that he has doctored the brakes of the car she was driving to cause her accident, intending to get rid of her. He has failed.

We sympathize with him. But this annoying, repetitious, overlong film is nonetheless thought-provoking and and may stick with you.

Black Rabbit, White Rabbit 139 mins., premiered at Busan and in Tajikstan in Sept. 2015 and showed also at London, Chicago, and in India. US release Apr. 24, 2026.