The Geometry of Story: Shahram Mokri and the Labyrinth of Black Rabbit White Rabbit

By Stephen Cyrus Sepher

A Film Made of Borders

When Tajikistan selected Black Rabbit White Rabbit as its official submission for the 2026 Academy Awards, the decision signaled something larger than a national endorsement. It marked a moment where cinema no longer fit neatly inside the borders printed on a passport. Shahram Mokri, one of the most inventive filmmakers working today, directed a film that speaks Tajik, Russian, Farsi, and even features a moment in Italian. The story flows the way identity flows. The film feels international not because it chases that label, but because Mokri sees language as texture and borders as narrative tools.

Tajikistan submitted the film because it is a Tajikistan and United Arab Emirates co-production that meets the Academy’s international feature criteria. This was not about percentages. It was about creative origin, financial structure, and the cultural footprint of the project. The selection is a recognition of how global storytelling has become, and how deeply Mokri understands the architecture of that world.

A Director Who Plays With Time

Mokri’s career has always been an elegant rebellion. Fish and Cat unspooled as a single looping take. Careless Crime created a temporal mirror between 1978 and the present day. Black Rabbit White Rabbit continues that tradition by bending narrative into a puzzle that closes its own loops.

The new film uses Tajikistan not as scenery but as circuitry, a landscape where multiple timelines and multiple languages collide. Tajik and Russian define the film’s cultural space. Farsi threads through emotional memory. Italian arrives unexpectedly, a shard of a second identity that widens the film’s aperture. Every linguistic shift functions like a camera move. Nothing is ornamental. Everything is structural.

The Cinematographer Who Sees Between Worlds

Mokri’s collaborator behind the camera is cinematographer Morteza Ghaidi, whose visual instincts have quietly shaped some of the most interesting independent work coming out of the Iranian and international film space. Ghaidi shot Black Rabbit White Rabbit with the same intuitive precision he brought to my own film, Wages of Sin. That film went on to win awards across multiple festivals, including Best Screenplay at the 2024 Arpa Film Festival. Ghaidi has a rare ability to make darkness expressive and silence dynamic. He shoots the psychological undercurrent, the moment just before a character knows what they feel. In Mokri’s labyrinth, that instinct becomes essential.

Enjoying this? Subscribe below.

When Paths Cross: Kermanshah to Hollywood

My own intersection with Shahram began on The Storyteller, a screenplay I wrote about an immigrant’s navigation through Hollywood’s shifting codes and contradictions. The work was personal and unguarded. Shahram connected to it immediately and wanted to direct the film.

Then came the coincidence that was not really a coincidence. Shahram is from Kermanshah, the same city my father came from. Two separate lives shaped by the same mountains and the same cultural rhythm, meeting decades later through a story written on the other side of the world. Cinema finds its own way.

Our collaboration led to a three hour conversation with Dustin Hoffman, who read the script, engaged deeply with its questions, and expressed genuine interest. It was one of those rare Hollywood moments where the distinction between admiration and understanding dissolves. Then the pandemic arrived. Then two industry strikes. The project paused, but the creative connection did not. We understood the same thing: this story will live when the world is ready to receive it.

The Larger Meaning

Mokri’s newest film is arriving at a moment when the industry is trying to remember what global storytelling actually looks like. Not a brand. Not a category. A reality. Black Rabbit White Rabbit is Tajik, Iranian, Central Asian, European, and borderless. It is a film that moves the way identity moves. It understands that the intersection of languages is not noise but music.

And the parallel is impossible to ignore. The Storyteller is about surviving Hollywood as an outsider. Black Rabbit White Rabbit is about surviving a world where the frame shifts every time you think you understand the rules. Both stories orbit a single truth. The shape of a narrative is determined by the courage of the person telling it.

If Mokri’s film finds its way to the Oscar shortlist, it will not be because it played by the rules. It will be because it demonstrated how those rules evolve.

If you enjoyed this narrative, subscribe to the newsletter. This is part of The Conversation Podcast, a storytelling series exploring the human side of art, technology, and ambition.