DIRECTOR: Shahram Mokri
STARRING: Babak Karimi, Hasti Mohammai, Kibriyo Dilyobova
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 19 minutes
LANGUAGE: Tajik, Russian
PLOT: A renowned director sets out to remake a classic Iranian film in Tajikistan, but the production takes an unsettling turn when the studio armorer suspects that the gun chosen for the shoot is real, and potentially dangerous. Meanwhile, a young woman arrives on set, determined to audition despite not being cast. Across town, Sara, still recovering from a near-fatal car crash, begins to uncover disturbing evidence that her “accident” was no accident at all. As these seemingly separate lives collide, their intertwined fates reveal a chilling truth beneath the surface of art, ambition, and deception.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Dushanbe, Tajikistan
To check out all previous submissions for Tajikistan, click HERE.
STARRING: Babak Karimi, Hasti Mohammai, Kibriyo Dilyobova
RUNNING TIME: 2 hrs 19 minutes
LANGUAGE: Tajik, Russian
PLOT: A renowned director sets out to remake a classic Iranian film in Tajikistan, but the production takes an unsettling turn when the studio armorer suspects that the gun chosen for the shoot is real, and potentially dangerous. Meanwhile, a young woman arrives on set, determined to audition despite not being cast. Across town, Sara, still recovering from a near-fatal car crash, begins to uncover disturbing evidence that her “accident” was no accident at all. As these seemingly separate lives collide, their intertwined fates reveal a chilling truth beneath the surface of art, ambition, and deception.
GENRE: Drama
FILMING LOCATION: Dushanbe, Tajikistan
To check out all previous submissions for Tajikistan, click HERE.
FILM REVIEW:
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Everything in life always cycles back to its original place."
Shahram Mokri’s Black Rabbit, White Rabbit unfolds as a mesmerizing labyrinth of intersecting narratives and hidden motives, confirming the Iranian director’s reputation for bending cinematic form. Set in Tajikistan, the film begins with the seemingly simple premise of a crew remaking a classic Iranian movie, but quickly dissolves into a study of paranoia, illusion, and the dangers of re-enacting the past. Mokri’s fluid camera and elliptical editing create a disorienting sense of continuity, where reality folds into fiction and the film-within-the-film becomes a mirror of its own making. Each frame pulses with tension, as if the act of filmmaking itself were a dangerous ritual that could spiral out of control.
The central narrative threads converge through small yet fateful details, a gun that may not be a prop, a mysterious young woman demanding an audition, and Sara, a woman haunted by a car crash that she gradually discovers was no accident. Mokri treats these elements like pieces of a cinematic puzzle, drawing the viewer into a world where cause and effect blur. His precise use of long takes and sound design amplifies the unease, often withholding answers just as the audience feels closest to understanding. The film’s rhythm, alternately slow and explosive, captures the fragile border between performance and reality, where every gesture feels both staged and deadly real.
What makes Black Rabbit, White Rabbit particularly striking is its atmosphere of quiet menace. Mokri turns the Tajik landscapes, mountainous, wind-swept, and almost otherworldly, into extensions of his characters’ inner turmoil. The production itself feels haunted, as though the film being made within the film were summoning unresolved ghosts of history and art. The ensemble’s restrained performances heighten this sense of uncertainty, portraying individuals caught between ambition and fear. Mokri’s visual compositions echo this emotional tension: corridors that stretch endlessly, mirrors that fracture faces, and light that feels like it’s fading as quickly as truth itself.
At its core, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit examines how stories, cinematic or otherwise, can both liberate and endanger those who tell them. Mokri uses the filmmaking process as a metaphor for power, illusion, and control: who decides what is real, and who must pay for that decision? By intertwining fiction with political subtext, the film becomes a meditation on the cost of representation itself. In the end, Mokri’s latest work is not just a thriller or a meta-cinematic experiment, it is a haunting reflection on the moral responsibility of storytelling in an uncertain world.
(This review contains spoilers.)
“Everything in life always cycles back to its original place."
Shahram Mokri’s Black Rabbit, White Rabbit unfolds as a mesmerizing labyrinth of intersecting narratives and hidden motives, confirming the Iranian director’s reputation for bending cinematic form. Set in Tajikistan, the film begins with the seemingly simple premise of a crew remaking a classic Iranian movie, but quickly dissolves into a study of paranoia, illusion, and the dangers of re-enacting the past. Mokri’s fluid camera and elliptical editing create a disorienting sense of continuity, where reality folds into fiction and the film-within-the-film becomes a mirror of its own making. Each frame pulses with tension, as if the act of filmmaking itself were a dangerous ritual that could spiral out of control.
The central narrative threads converge through small yet fateful details, a gun that may not be a prop, a mysterious young woman demanding an audition, and Sara, a woman haunted by a car crash that she gradually discovers was no accident. Mokri treats these elements like pieces of a cinematic puzzle, drawing the viewer into a world where cause and effect blur. His precise use of long takes and sound design amplifies the unease, often withholding answers just as the audience feels closest to understanding. The film’s rhythm, alternately slow and explosive, captures the fragile border between performance and reality, where every gesture feels both staged and deadly real.
What makes Black Rabbit, White Rabbit particularly striking is its atmosphere of quiet menace. Mokri turns the Tajik landscapes, mountainous, wind-swept, and almost otherworldly, into extensions of his characters’ inner turmoil. The production itself feels haunted, as though the film being made within the film were summoning unresolved ghosts of history and art. The ensemble’s restrained performances heighten this sense of uncertainty, portraying individuals caught between ambition and fear. Mokri’s visual compositions echo this emotional tension: corridors that stretch endlessly, mirrors that fracture faces, and light that feels like it’s fading as quickly as truth itself.
At its core, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit examines how stories, cinematic or otherwise, can both liberate and endanger those who tell them. Mokri uses the filmmaking process as a metaphor for power, illusion, and control: who decides what is real, and who must pay for that decision? By intertwining fiction with political subtext, the film becomes a meditation on the cost of representation itself. In the end, Mokri’s latest work is not just a thriller or a meta-cinematic experiment, it is a haunting reflection on the moral responsibility of storytelling in an uncertain world.
