Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri has transformed the Möbius strip into a cinematic form of its own, extending beyond the familiar framework of time loop narratives. Following his 2020 feature Careless Crime, Mokri returns with another intricately constructed film, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit. Moving away from the overt political undercurrents of his earlier works, this new film expands his exploration of cinema’s self-reflective potential, positioning itself as a layered, meta-puzzle of narrative and form.
Black Rabbit, White Rabbit opens deceptively as a domestic drama centered on Sara (Hasti Mohammaï), her body wrapped in bandages after a car accident, and her withdrawn, volatile husband. As Sara wanders through their spacious home, a series of strange and disjointed events unfold. Yet, as is characteristic of Mokri, the story soon reveals itself to be only one layer of a larger cinematic construct.
Sara’s narrative is, in fact, part of a film being shot on location in Tajikistan, one of two productions taking place side by side. The second is a meticulous remake of an old Iranian film whose director insists it be replicated in every possible detail. Between these two sets moves Babak (Mokri’s frequent collaborator Babak Karimi), a seasoned film armorer working on his fortieth production. Unable to access the set to inspect a gun slated for use, Babak grows increasingly uneasy. His apprehension is heightened by memories of a fatal on-set accident that occurred during another crew’s fortieth film, and by his repeated inability to meet the elusive director, known only as Shahram. Amid this intricate web of overlapping realities, a young woman, initially hired as an extras coordinator on the remake, seeks to step in front of the camera, adding yet another layer to Mokri’s self-referential maze of filmmaking within film.
The three storylines interweave through the intricate narrative and formal structures that have come to define Mokri’s filmmaking. Since Fish & Cat, he has developed a distinctive approach centered on manipulating time, genre, and cinematic form. That earlier work, presented in a single continuous take, expanded the slasher framework into a looping, disorienting narrative. Invasion furthered this formal experiment, combining the single-shot technique with elements of procedural drama and hints of vampirism. With Careless Crime, Mokri abandoned the continuous-shot device in favor of vertically layered storytelling, blending historical reconstruction with meta-textual reflection to revisit the 1978 Cinema Rex fire.
Black Rabbit, White Rabbit extends the formal experimentation of Careless Crime, abandoning the single-take structure while retaining Mokri’s signature long takes that intertwine across space and time. The result is a network of overlapping Möbius strips, each folding back into the others.
Set within the Tajik film industry yet directed by one of Iran’s most distinctive formalists, the film functions simultaneously as a meta-mystery and a study in cinematic illusion. Mokri constructs an intricate architecture in which storylines intersect at unexpected points, looping into one another and forming branching timelines through a series of overlaps, repetitions, and ellipses. The film merges the hypnotic, unbroken flow of Fish & Cat with the architectural layering, self-referential structure of Careless Crime, dissolving distinctions between reality and fiction and transforming them into a fluid and relative state.
In Mokri’s storytelling, the boundaries between reality and fiction remain porous, each seeping into and reshaping the other with a faintly surreal undertone. Yet the director maintains his characteristic sleight of hand, constantly shifting the viewer’s perception of which reality is in play.
Sara’s tense exchanges with her withdrawn but volatile husband build toward an eruption, only for Babak to unexpectedly enter the frame. In a sudden reveal, the house’s walls are pulled away, exposing the setting as a film studio. The transformation occurs seamlessly, even though moments earlier Sara had been moving through the same house’s corridors, courtyard, and rooms, blurring any clear line between the domestic world and its cinematic reconstruction.
As in Careless Crime, Mokri employs elements of magical realism that act as subtle ruptures, glitches in the fabric of reality that expose its underlying instability. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit pushes the temporal and spatial elasticity of cinema to its limits, constructing a narrative that functions both as a mirrored Borgesian labyrinth and as a convoluted sculpture.
Despite its 139-minute runtime, the film sustains engagement through its intricate formal design and intellectual precision. It fulfills the expectations set by Mokri’s earlier works while extending them, its multiple layers and interwoven allusions.
Mokri continues his distinctive fusion of genre and arthouse sensibilities. Though Black Rabbit, White Rabbit functions as a meta-film, an exploration of filmmaking itself and of fluid, interwoven realities, it retains the structure of a mystery. Much like in David Lynch’s work, mystery operates as the film’s central engine. Within the story, it manifests through Sara’s enigmatic car accident, while on a meta level it drives the viewer’s attempt to discern the boundaries between reality and fiction.
Subtle humor runs through the film, offsetting its cerebral design. Mokri enriches the texture with touches of magical realism and gentle surrealism layered over the film’s three-dimensional narrative structure. The frame teems with odd details, playful sight gags, and uncanny figures drifting through the background. As in Lynch’s Inland Empire, characters appear in giant rabbit costumes, yet the motif of rabbits carries a broader symbolic function here, woven throughout the film. The most apparent reference, openly acknowledged, is Alice in Wonderland, evoked through the recurring theme of passage and transformation as a young woman crosses between different temporal and spatial moments on the set.
At the same time, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit may be one of the most elaborate cinematic gags of Chekhov’s gun principle. The film is framed by the sound of a gunshot and includes an entire subplot centered on a character’s mounting anxiety over a prop weapon that could prove lethal, a thread that even makes passing reference to the Alec Baldwin incident.
Mokri’s film unfolds with the intricate precision of an M.C. Escher drawing, whose influence is explicitly acknowledged through the interlinking scenes while Escher´s painting is seen in the background of a scene as an Easter egg.
Mokri’s first production made outside Iran, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is a co-production between Tajikistan and the United Arab Emirates, featuring dialogue in both Russian and Tajik, a Persian dialect. While it retains traces of Iranian social drama and Mokri’s ongoing dialogue with American genre cinema, the film acquires a new dimension compared to the filmmaker´s previous works. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is a cross between M.C. Escher’s dazzling space (and time) defying structural illusions and Sergei Parajanov’s ornamental visualism.
Folklore, and ritual intermingle within the film’s intricate mosaic. Unlike Parajanov’s static, painterly tableaux, Mokri’s camera, guided by cinematographer Morteza Gheidi, glides seamlessly through different scenes and realities despite the film being cut into several chapters. Still, the set design of the remake within the film recalls Parajanov’s ornamental sensibility, adding a tactile richness to Mokri’s conceptual framework.
Black Rabbit, White Rabbit consolidates Mokri’s standing as one of the most formally inventive filmmakers working today, while suggesting a shift in scale for his cinema. Beneath its intricate structure lies a reflection on the uneasy boundaries between representation and reality in addition to a variety of other motifs. While its intellectual design may challenge conventional viewing habits, Mokri balances genre storytelling with the multi-dimensional time-loop extravaganza in a manner that does not alienate viewers. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit reaffirms Mokri’s position at the intersection of experimental filmmaking and philosophical cinema while perfecting his take on quantum storytelling.
Black Rabbit, White Rabbit won the Asian Vision Award at the 30th Busan International Film Festival. Deaf Crocodile will release the film in the U.S. territory in Spring 2026. The film has been submitted as Tajikistan´s entry in the best international feature film category at the Oscars.