Black Rabbit, White Rabbit: Standard Edition – Deaf Crocodile (Blu-ray)

Theatrical Release Date: Tajikistan/United Arab Emirates, 2025
Director: Shahram Mokri
Writers: Nasim Ahmadpour, Shahram Mokri
Cast: Babak Karimi, Hasti Mohammai, Kibriyo Dilyobova, Bezhan Davlyatov

Release Date: August 25th, 2026
Approximate Running Time: 139 Minutes 9 Seconds
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen / 1080 Progressive / MPEG-4 AVC
Rating: NR
Sound: DTS-HD Stereo Tajiki and Russian
Subtitles: English
Region Coding: Region A
Retail Price: $29.95

"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." - synopsis provided by the distributor

Video: 5/5

Black Rabbit, White Rabbit comes on a 50 GB dual layer Blu-ray.

Disc Size: 46.1 GB

Feature: 39.8 GB

The source looks excellent; flesh tones and colors look correct, and image clarity, black levels, and compression are solid.

Audio: 5/5

This release comes with one audio option, a DTS-HD 5.1 mix in Tajiki and Russian with removable English subtitles. Dialogue always comes through clearly; everything sounds balanced and ambient sounds are well-represented.

Extras:

Extras for this release include trailer #1 (1 minute 34 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Tajiki and Russian with non-removable English subtitles), trailer #2 (1 minute 51 seconds, Dolby Digital stereo Tajiki and Russian with non-removable English subtitles), a video essay by Stephen Broomer titled The Maze: Entrances and Exits in Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, an audio commentary with film programmer and critic Tori Potenza, and three short films directed by Shahram Mokri: The Dragonfly Storm (15 minutes 46 seconds, 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Dolby Digital stereo Farsi with removable English subtitles), Ando-C (16 minutes 10 seconds, 1.37:1 aspect ratio, Dolby Digital stereo Farsi with removable English subtitles), and Limits of the Circle (15 minutes 45 seconds, 1.78:1 aspect ratio, Dolby Digital stereo Farsi with removable English subtitles).

The Dragonfly Storm: A man arrives home and discovers the power is out and when he resets a fuse, he causes an accident that kills his wife.

Ando-C: A series of events on a wedding day makes a bride question her existence in the world.

Limits of the Circle: A man walks through a building, encountering people, and as time unfolds, it becomes clear that he is trapped in a time loop.

Summary:

The story revolves around three characters: a film armorer with safety concerns, an aspiring actress determined to audition for a director's latest film, and a woman who has been horribly disfigured by a car crash, all of whom have intertwined narratives.

“Everything cycles back to its place," a line spoken by a character perfectly sums up Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, and the cinema of Shahram Mokri. For his latest film, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, he returns to familiar themes like fate, identity, and the role that history plays in shaping the future.

While all of Shahram Mokri's films blur lines when it comes to reality, with Black Rabbit, White Rabbit, he achieves his most satisfying balance of subjectivity and objectivity. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is an exploration of truth and resolution. While the latter is ultimately elusive, its finale provides sufficient closure. That said, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is a multilayered film filled with symbolism and subtext that's never heavyhanded.

Having now worked my way through every short and feature film directed by Shahram Mokri, I have become familiar with his techniques and thematic obsessions. Black Rabbit, White Rabbit once again sees Shahram Mokri use lengthy shots with minimal editing and non-linear narratives with multiple protagonists whose stories intersect in the finale. Like his previous film, Careless Crime, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit employs the film-within-a-film technique. Where the first half of the narrative devotes uninterrupted, lengthy introductions to each character, the latter half takes on a Rashomon-like structure that reconstructs events from different perspectives. Ultimately, Black Rabbit, White Rabbit is a puzzle box film whose mysteries make its moment of truth all the more resonant.

Black Rabbit, White Rabbit gets an excellent release from Deaf Crocodile that comes with a solid audio/video presentation, three short films, and a pair of insightful extras. Recommended.

Note: There is a deluxe release of Black Rabbit, White Rabbit that comes in a slipcase and a 60-page booklet with an essay written by film critic Walter Chaw (Film Freak Central), an essay written by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, and an essay written by Michelle Kisner.

Written by Michael Den Boer