The Brooklyn Academy of Music will review Shahram Mokri’s films

TEHRAN — The Brooklyn Academy of Music plans to review the films of Iranian filmmaker Shahram Mokri during a special program starting Friday.

The screenings will be followed by question-and-answer sessions, which Mokri will participate in, the academy announced.

His latest drama “Careless Crime,” which won the Premio Bisato d’Oro for Best Original Screenplay at the Venice Film Festival, is one of the films selected to screen during the week-long program.

In this film, the mind-bending mystery of Mokri merges the past with the present and reality with fiction inspired by a real-life tragedy, the infamous Cinema Rex fire of 1978.

The academy called “Careless Crime” “a mysterious puzzle box, equal parts Abbas Kiarostami and Chris Marker.”

The program also offers “Invasion”. Sport, murder, and a whirlwind of overlapping identities and realities make up Mokri’s third film. The one-of-a-kind experience and sci-fi-detective-vampire hybrid story is set in a future dystopia, with nods to stylized 1980s new wave movies like “Liquid Sky.”

“Fish & Cat” and “Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories” will also be reviewed.

In “Fish & Cat”, young Iranian kite enthusiasts gather at the edge of a gloomy lake, near a restaurant offering macabre dishes straight out of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Mokri’s eerie, circular and dreamlike second feature, inspired by a true story, is a brilliantly unclassifiable and unique meditation on 1970s American slasher films filtered through an arthouse lens.

It is the winner of the Venice Film Festival Special Prize for Innovative Content.

“Ashkan, the Charmed Ring and Other Stories” is Mokri’s feature debut. It’s a delightfully quirky black-and-white comedy about interconnected strangers and the mysterious workings of fate, played out in deadpan, Jim Jarmusch-esque vignettes.

In its announcement for the film, the Brooklyn Academy of Music said, “Watch for sly references to film noir classics in this eccentric Iranian gem.

Photo: Abolfazl Kahani in a scene from ‘Careless Crime’ directed by Shahram Mokri.

MMS/YAW