WHAT’S the connection between slasher flicks and the art of M.C. Escher? Both inspired Iranian writer-director Shahram Mokri’sFish & Cat, winner of a special award for innovation at the 2013 Venice Film Festival.

The 134-minute thriller, which was shot, astoundingly, in a single take, involves an isolated lake, creepy woods, a group of camping students and a restaurant that may be serving human flesh. But more striking than the movie’s plot is its uncanny chronology, in which time seems to double back on itself.

Tense scenes unfurl to the strains of ominous music: kite-flying gear mysteriously disappears; a pair of one-armed twins stalks around; a menacing-looking restaurateur carries what looks like a bag of bloody meat. Events recur, but from different angles, all without the camera work ever resorting to a cut.

“Time in this film is like closed circles. Circles which in themselves have circles,” Mokri, 35, said in an email interview, noting that his intent was to give chronology the kind of logic-defying structure that certain Escher images give to architecture, producing an effect that Mokri describes as “always so magical to our mind”.