It Was Just an Accident (Yek tasadef sadeh)

 

Director Jafar Panahi

Panahi accepting the Palme d'Or at Cannes

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT (Yek tasadef sadeh)                      B                                             Iran  France  Luxembourg  USA  (103 mi)  2025  d: Jafar Panahi

For the script, the initial idea came very quickly, I wondered what would happen if one of those around me in prison, once out, got their hands on someone who had inflicted torture and humiliation on him.  —Jafar Panahi

Winner of the Palme d’Or Award (1st Place) at Cannes, the first Iranian film to win the coveted prize since Abbas Kiarostami’s THE TASTE OF CHERRY (1997), where this may be a case of the Cannes jury awarding a twice imprisoned director based upon his life experiences as an artist whose work has been banned by an authoritarian regime, which helped shape his moral vision, as opposed to the film he has made, which sets no new cinematic standards, as it’s essentially the same ambiguous morality play he’s been making for the past fifteen years, no better and no worse.  Unlike his previous three films, TAXI (2015), 3 Faces (Se rokh) (2018), and No Bears (Khers nist) (2022), this one does not star the director in front of the camera.  Panahi shares a similar fate as his fellow persecuted Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof, whose films Manuscripts Don't Burn (Dast-neveshtehaa nemisoosand) (2013), 2020 Top Ten List #2 There Is No Evil (Sheytan vojud nadarad) (2020), and The Seed of the Sacred Fig (Dâne-ye anjîr-e ma'âbed) (2024) also reflect the same experience of imprisonment and torture, which this resembles in style and philosophy.  While an outraged free world is quick to award prizes and heap critical acclaim upon these films, it’s fair to question whether these prizes are deserving, as audiences in theaters are divided, many wondering what all the fuss is about.  In fact, one might even go so far as to think Panahi’s best films were actually made prior to his arrest, which would be THE WHITE BALLOON (1995), written by Abbas Kiarostami and winner of the Camera D’Or (Best First Feature) at Cannes, THE MIRROR (1997), winner of the Golden Leopard (1st Place) at the Locarno Festival, THE CIRCLE (2000), winner of the Golden Lion (1st Place) at Venice, CRIMSON GOLD (2003), winner of the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize (2nd place) at Cannes, and OFFSIDE (2006), winner of the Grand Jury Prize (2nd Place) at Berlin, where all but his first two films, which were made with government support and focused on children, have been banned from ever screening in Iran.  Whatever you happen to believe, his earlier films were not alike, showing more distinct differences in look, style, content, and thematic vision.  Since his arrest, they all seem to be part of the same vein, defying authorities by filming in secret with almost no money, smuggling the prints out of the country to be distributed in the West, elaborating on moral and philosophical dilemmas.  While they may be headier works, delving into ageless questions of the eternal, they can also be painstakingly frustrating to watch, with plenty of long takes (one near the end lasting nearly 12-minutes), as we bear witness to the effects of torture and trauma, leaving unanswered existential questions that linger long afterwards.  As if arising out of the claustrophobic setting of Roman Polanski’s DEATH AND THE MAIDEN  (1994), with similarities to Jonathan Millet’s recent GHOST TRAIL (2024), this is a blend of crime thriller and dark comedy, set over the course of a frenzied 24 hours, with pacing that is taut and unpredictable, as well as overt philosophical references to the absurdity of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, which in this case refers to waiting for justice, where none of these flawed characters are particularly likeable, but that’s not the point, as it’s about people living under the brutal oppression of an authoritarian regime, who are thrust together and forced to have a reckoning with the past, where everyone deals with shared trauma in different ways, so the question becomes what would you the viewer do under similar circumstances?  Just how far are you willing to go, do they have the right man, what are the ramifications of torture in a police state when the killers are still walking among us, can the cycle of violence ever end, and just how does one eradicate evil?  It’s interesting how Panahi interjects children into the discussion, exerting a silent influence, where that innocence is a stark contrast to the murderous dirty work of their parents.  Panahi can now work safely in France, while continuing to live in Tehran, where this is France’s submission at the Oscars for the Best International Film.    

While it’s no small feat to live and survive under harshly oppressive circumstances, that strong-handed, authoritarian rule has become more commonplace around the world, where it may take more than a puzzling ambiguity and unanswerable moral questions to believe this is essential or groundbreaking cinema, though it does resort to a more straightforward narrative for the first time in a decade, where a dissection of modern Iran evolves into a comedy of errors, with much of this mirroring Paul Thomas Anderson’s American exposé in One Battle After Another (2025) which is also surprisingly prescient, where in each film it’s the prevalent use of humor that’s surprising for such a heavy subject matter, offering a humane complexity.  Nonetheless the highly distinguished Palme d’Or award universally recognizes the importance of artistic expression in defiance of repression.  Although Iranian New Wave cinema, especially after the Islamic Revolution (1979), accepted plenty of restrictions and censorship, Iranian directors were not discouraged and managed to create a new visual language in order to convey philosophic, tragic, and tenderly sweet messages from children that may be defined as a humanistic aesthetic, connecting art to the real-life contemporary problems of ordinary people in a near documentary style.  Key figures of the Iranian New Wave cinema movement would include Abbas Kiarostami, the undisputed pioneer of Iranian cinema, making films both before and after the revolution, Dariush Mehrjui, who moved from social issues to a more personal cinema, Majid Majidi, a poet of humanism, Mohsen Makhmalbaf and his wife Marziyeh Meshkini, and later his daughter Samira, filmmakers with a social conscience, followed by Panahi, the voice of resistance, making politically charged films that critique the Iranian government, Asghar Farhadi, the master of moral dilemmas, and Bahman Ghobadi, exploring the resilience and culture of the Kurdish people along the border.  Panahi began as a protégée of Kiarostami, and was originally sentenced in 2010 for his support of the Iranian Green Movement, imprisoned briefly, placed in solitary confinement and blindfolded when undergoing interrogation sessions, then placed under house arrest, where it would be more than a decade before he went to prison to serve his sentence, nonetheless he was banned from filmmaking, traveling, and speaking to the international press for 20 years.  However this did not deter him from making films in secret and working around the conditions of his sentence, but he was imprisoned initially in 2010, serving a few months before he was placed under house arrest awaiting his trial, and again in 2022, sent to the notorious Evin Prison, spending seven months until he was released the following year, but only after going on a hunger strike, with the conditions of his sentence finally lifted, allowing him to travel to Cannes for the first time since 2003 to collect the Palme d’Or in person, where he was welcomed like a conquering hero.  Jury president Juliette Binoche expressed solidarity with the then-imprisoned filmmaker at the 2010 Cannes award ceremony after receiving the Best Actress Award for her performance in Kiarostami’s CERTIFIED COPY.  Panahi stressed that this film was also made in secret, due to their explicit critiques of the authoritarian government and their history of ongoing violence, using limited resources, with some astonishing aspects to the editing by Amir Etminan (Editing in Secrecy: How Amir Etminan Cut Jafar Panahi's ...), which was also conducted in secret from a safehouse in Tehran, working completely alone, without an assistant or post-production team, shouldering the entire process himself, staying offline for safeguarding, using equipment that was far too small for all the footage, which was hidden in different locations across the city to evade raids.  Under constant threat of discovery, the risk was clear, that if discovered, he could potentially face potential arrest and a permanent ban from the country.  During the actual shoot, they were stopped by authorities at one point, but they were alerted with enough time to quickly remove all evidence of filming, so they were temporarily detained, but eventually let go. 

This film is a result of the director’s own experience in prison and what he endured, feeling very personal, which the filmmaker claims is “based on real events experienced by actual prisoners,” opening on a deserted highway outside Tehran late at night where there are no lights, as a husband Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) driving with his pregnant wife and exuberantly playful daughter fatally runs over a dog, while also damaging his car, sending the young girl into despair, with her mother claiming “It was just an accident.”  This dialogue-heavy, neo-realist story sets the tone for what follows, as it’s a series of calamities that places ordinary individuals in precarious predicaments, each one having to answer for how they respond, with the film rooted in complex questions, while also exposing what appears to be a rampant societal epidemic of corrupt payoffs and blatantly forced tips.  Dropping his car into a nearby garage afterwards, the storyline shifts to Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), an unassuming Azerbaijani mechanic, who recognizes the sound of the man’s voice, and even more distinctive is the squeaking sound of his prosthetic leg, immediately recognizing him as Pegleg Eghbal, the notorious prison interrogator who mercilessly tortured him and other blindfolded political prisoners.  The next day, he follows and kidnaps the man in broad daylight, knocking him unconscious before dragging him into the desert to bury him alive, showing no mercy whatsoever, but when the man vehemently denies the accusations, Vahid hesitates, and seeks confirmation from a few of his fellow survivors, including Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a war-scarred photographer found in the middle of a wedding shoot, who doesn’t want to deal with this anymore, as she’s finally put her life back together, and goes hijab-less nearly the entire film.  The young married couple, still in their Western wedding attire, is Golrokh (Hadis Pakbaten, also without a hijab) and Ali (the director’s nephew Majid Panahi), both of whom share grudges against this man, as well as Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), an impulsive hothead, a volatile former inmate who angrily wants to kill him on the spot.  Each recognizes a distinct mannerism, his smell, his limp, his tone, but no one is certain, as they were all blindfolded while tortured in prison, though Hamid thinks he recognizes the scars on the guard’s legs.  They all end up yelling and screaming at each other, arguing over what to do, their conflicted emotions inflamed by this prisoner, whose presence allows their traumatic memories to resurface, making them angry at what they were forced to endure.  With doubt creeping in, vengeance and justice blur, as they can’t decide for certain what they really want to do with this guy, only that the irrationality of their emotions is taking over, It Was Just an Accident new clip official from Cannes Film ...  YouTube (1:49), a scene that contains perhaps the most vulgar slew of curses in Farsi of any movie filmed and set in Iran, offering an uncensored representation of the anger and trauma held by Iranians who were persecuted by the regime and who managed to survive, while expressing that anger in public is grounds for arrest, encapsulating just how radical the film is and what it is trying to achieve.  Scorned by trauma, raging at the thought of exacting vengeance, the characters question how to plot their revenge, questioning whether they really want to become what he represents, merciless killers carrying out acts of horrific violence.  The cast is mostly made up of dedicated amateurs, who suddenly have a change of heart, conflicted by their nagging conscience, unable to find any acceptable solution, which only angers and disappoints them even more.  But one thing is clear, ordinary family man Eghbal is a despicable figure who sadistically carried out hideous crimes, leaving each one of them scarred and damaged for life, where there is no reprieve from the trauma that will forever haunt them, left to replay it in their minds over and over again, like a broken record.  Whatever the outcome, they have descended into an all-consuming hell that was inflicted upon them, where there is no escape.  Panahi shines a light on a grotesque aspect of the Islamic regime, yet in the end, even Eghbal is a human being, presenting the audience with an ethical dilemma, where audiences will wonder if retribution or redemption is the right course of action. 

Jafar Panahi and Martin Scorsese on It Was Just an Accident ...  YouTube (1:08:25)

No Bears (Khers nist)

 

Director Jafar Panahi

NO BEARS (Khers nist)        B                                                                                                     Iran  (106 mi)  2022  d: Jafar Panahi

I am not a part of society.  That obviously affects me and is something that I reflect on.  My personal experiences now play a much greater role in my work than society does.  In other words, my inspiration comes from my present circumstances and is then transferred into society, rather than being the other way around.  It is almost as if an entire society exists within me.

—Jafar Panahi interview with Ehsan Khoshbakht and Drew Todd, editors of the Jafar Panahi: Interviews, 2018, Jafar Panahi - Project MUSE

Surprise, surprise!  Another moral tale from Iran.  Jafar Panahi, Mohammad Rasoulof, and Mustafa Al-Ahmad have all been targeted film directors by this Iranian government regime, part of a broad crackdown on as many as 100 artists, repeatedly rounded up and arrested, while also serving jail time, as government censors still ban all foreign films as well as anything else deemed counter-revolutionary.  While some may believe that a persecuted artist in some way deserves a greater voice, elevating the importance of their work, as Panahi is not heard in his own country, where he has been effectively silenced by the Iranian government, his films banned, forbidden to make new films or travel out of the country, as he’s been on house arrest now for over a decade since 2010 for attending the funeral of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young Iranian woman killed during the 2009 Iran election protests, as he was accused of conspiring against the government by supporting the dissident unrest that followed the disputed 2009 re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  And while that may be true, this is a very cryptic film, told in code as it’s made illegally, where you have to read between the lines, as Panahi’s films negotiate the territory between an art striving for freedom and its imposed constraints, where the claustrophobic intensity feels like the walls are closing in, yet there’s a surprising amount of humor in what amounts to a very serious film, where it’s impossible to view this without constantly thinking about the current conditions in Iran and the possible fate of the director.  It also brings to mind the fate of Iranian freedom activist Narges Mohammadi, winner of the Nobel Prize in 2023 while imprisoned in her own country for defending women's rights, sentenced to 16 years for running “a human rights movement that campaigns for the abolition of the death penalty,” while also criticizing the regime’s use of torture and sexualized violence.  Not much actually happens in this film, as instead everything is implied, where there’s a dark cloud hanging over what we see, stuck in a no man’s land, suggesting ominous possibilities, yet there’s an unhurried, relaxed pace, told in a very evenhanded manner, blurring the lines between a documentary and a feature film.  The cultural aspects pit ancient traditions against modern sensibilities, where it’s not easy to navigate one’s way through this seemingly arcane experience filled with hidden minefields, where we’re continually looking backwards, unable or unwilling to face the future, or seek any kind of progress, as we’re caught in a web of unresolvable roadblocks that keep us stuck in the past, becoming an allegorical purgatory.  When Panahi began his career, he was considered among the more Westernized of the Iranian filmmakers, especially CRIMSON GOLD (2003), which has a more commercialized style to it, almost like a sophisticated thriller, the closest the director has come to making a genre film, with a prominent scene veering into the palatial opulence of Fellini’s NIGHTS OF CABIRIA (1957), even featuring a jazz soundtrack.  However, since his house arrest, with severe restrictions on his filmmaking, his style has become more minimalist, resembling the films of his compatriot Abbas Kiarostami, having worked as his assistant director in the 90’s, but his recent films are more straightforward, lacking the depth and poetic grace of Kiarostami, particularly the gorgeously visualized rural compositions, probably because they are made in secret on next to no budget, and have the feel of being made on the fly, eventually having to be smuggled out of the country, where this won a Special Jury Prize (3rd Place) at the 2022 Venice Film Festival.                   

From the maker of 3 Faces (Se rokh) (2018), this continues his neorealist exploration of the mountainous region of the West Azerbaijan Province and the remote rural communities where Panahi grew up, with the director playing a fictional film director who is banned from making films and leaving the country, moving to a remote village near the Turkish border where he rents a space where he can work with the help of his obliging host Ghanbar (Vahid Mobaseri) and his elderly mother.  Despite the rural isolation, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, Panahi’s presence unleashes a torrent of activity in this small community, as old grievances are suddenly catapulted to the forefront, where as a successful artist he’s expected to intervene and perhaps bring a calm rationality to these festering tensions.  Working remotely, communicating by phone, directing scenes taking place in neighboring Turkey through a livestream on his computer, he also faces unexpected difficulties by continually losing WiFi coverage, reminiscent of similar circumstances in Kiarostami’s THE WIND WILL CARRY US (1999), accentuating the consequences of human isolation, where this could just as easily have been entitled NO BORDERS, as the fate of different characters rests upon crossing that border, including the director, whose limits have been imposed by the state.  Added to that are the constant interruptions by unexpected visitors, each plagued by some unforeseen dilemma, which becomes a Marx Brothers comedy of errors, where it appears Panahi can never get any work done.  The fictionalized documentary style film he is making morphs into a realist film within a film, opening on a busy street in Turkey filled with street vendors and street musicians collecting money, with people seen sitting in a pub, as we follow an Iranian couple in forced exile, Zara (Mina Kavani), a waitress in a café, who sneaks out to meet her partner Bakhtiar (Bakhtiyar Panjeei).  Having acquired a stolen passport for Zara after ten years of waiting, both having been subject to arrests and abuse, including torture, Bakhtiar insists Zara go on ahead and flee to Europe, and he will join her later.  An emotional and confused Zara expresses her refusal to leave without Bakhtiar, just as the assistant director, Reza (Reza Heidari), yells “Cut!”  A film about the making of a film, where the storytelling is far from obvious, what initially stands out is how the illusion of filmmaking blends into a stark reality, as we discover Zara and Bakhtiar are in real life planning to escape to Paris using forged documents.  In a stunning turn of events, her tirade upon learning that her partner’s new life-saving passport is just a movie prop, is shocking, refusing to play a fake version of herself, angered at how this affects their real lives, as that deception ultimately drives her to despair.  The backdrop of the film is living in fear, as Iranian people are living in a police state, constantly subject to harassment and arrest by the Revolutionary guard, so the residents are afraid the government eyes on this big city director from Tehran will only draw attention to the black market smuggling operation taking place along the border, which is already under surveillance, as it’s entirely illegal, yet is how people in these rural, isolated areas have survived for years.  When villagers hear Panahi has driven to the top of the mountain for better reception, he inadvertently entered the heart of smuggler territory, drawing their ire, wondering what he’s up to while arousing their suspicions.  But on his return he’s met by a troubled young woman, Gozal (Darya Alei), who pleads with Panahi to help in covering up a photograph she believes he had taken of her and Solduz (Amir Davari), an expelled university student whose crime was participating in a demonstration.  Gozal is in love with Solduz, but was promised at birth to the reckless and hot-headed Jacob (Javad Siyahi), who is violently prepared to take matters into his own hands.  She implores him not to show the picture, as if he does, “there will be blood.”   

Without fully understanding the implications, Panahi is besieged by residents afterwards demanding the photograph as proof of an existing relationship between the lovers, accused by villagers of promoting the forbidden union, suddenly finding himself in the middle of a longstanding family feud, where antiquated customs seem to be fueling the desire to rid the town of unholy or unhealthy elements, with the villagers suggesting he’s holding incriminating evidence.  Even after giving them his camera’s memory card as proof he has no alleged photograph of the couple, they remain unconvinced, urging Panahi to go to their swearing room and swear to God that he did not take the picture of Gozal and Solduz together.  While expressing reservations about antiquated customs, Panahi requests to film his testimony, which unleashes of flood of resistance, with suggestions that those who control the images control the narrative.  While it’s hard to imagine a world where love is a crime, it soon becomes clear that while Panahi has problems with the authorities, the villagers remain in the thralls of tradition, believing in age-old rituals shrouded by superstitions, where it’s impossible to reason with their perceived slights, as they are offended by what he represents, an outsider (or “foreigner”) from the city disregarding their own customs.  One villager warns him about the danger of bears along the road, later acknowledging that these stories are concocted to fan the flames of fear, suggesting “our fears empower others.”  Just as fictitious stories are designed to frighten people about things that don’t actually exist, the tyrannical government also implements laws to terrorize its own citizens, where suffocating traditions only empower the reign of terror, as Iran is not a democracy, but a violently repressive autocratic Islamic power that has only become more fanatical, continuing to rely upon irrational religious customs, such as the naming of a husband at the time of birth in an arranged marriage, never allowing that grown-up woman the right to make her own choice.  Even in the remote villages, the struggles with patriarchal authority are as oppressive as in the city, revealing the sexist and misogynistic prejudices that date back centuries, which fly in the face of modernity, leaving women in a Kafkaesque predicament where only desperate acts, like leaving the country, offer any hint of a better life.  While the film is a subversive stab at the absurdity of religious dogma, these metaphorical tales can only go so far, as they themselves are figments of the imagination.  The film’s merging into social realism can feel disjointed trying to assemble its various parts, making it a difficult watch, delving into a world of untold tragedies in a very dark finale raising unanswerable questions.  However, there’s little emotional engagement, and the simplicity of the artistry can feel underwhelming, with little visual flair, especially when compared to other artists in similar positions, where the early works of Krzysztof Kieślowski come to mind, making powerful moral parables like Blind Chance (Przypadek) (1981) or NO END (1985), which were also banned.  In the large scheme of things, it’s questionable what influence this film has, feeling more like he’s preaching to the converted.  How do you create art that is interested in changing society when people are not interested in change?  Those who are living in freedom appreciate the effort, while those who are not will probably never see the film, so much like Kieślowski, history will be the ultimate judge.