Black Rabbit, White Rabbit (BLU-RAY)

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.