Black Rabbit, White Rabbit

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…