One of Iranian cinema’s most fearless directors, Jafar Panahi has stood firm against his country’s repeated efforts to muzzle him. The greater the efforts to restrain Panahi through bans and arrests, the more vigorous his straining at the leash.
Already a keen critic of injustice, corruption and normalised tyranny in Iranian society, Panahi’s films became darker and bleaker with This Is Not a Film (2011), created while he was under house arrest for supporting the opposition during the country’s national election. The subsequent movies, made clandestinely and in between jail stints, are of a piece. They reflect with unstinting frankness and absurdist humour the psychological state of a filmmaker staring down censorship.
Panahi’s latest movie It Was Just An Accident (2025) explores the dilemma that arises when the accused become the accusers. The Oscar-nominated film is out on MUBI.
An incident on a highway brings together a man with a prosthetic leg, a mechanic, a photographer, the photographer’s ex-boyfriend and a bethrothed couple. When Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) first meets Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), he is convinced that Eghbal is the man who tortured him in prison.
Vahid kidnaps Eghbal and takes him to other similarly afflicted prisoners – the photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), Shiva’s former partner Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr) and Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), who is to wed Ali (Majid Panahi).
None of them has seen Eghbal while they were imprisoned. They have only heard his voice and the sound of his fake leg, smelt his body odour. Like in the parable of the six blind men and the elephant, fierce discussions ensue about the correct course of action, even as Eghbal declares his innocence.
Loosely modelled on Death and the Maiden, It Was Just An Accident is a moral debate packaged as a thriller. The arguments over Eghbal’s fate unveil the terrible ways in his abductors have suffered for standing up to repression. A verbal standoff between Goli and Hamid reveals the class differences among the kidnappers.
They aren’t just sparring about Eghbal. They are also bearing witness to the treatment of political prisoners. But they are not vigilantes. Having turned the tables on their oppressor, they are unsure about what to do with the power they now have over him.
Panahi’s latest expression of rage is raw and powerful, filled with tense scenes and suspenseful moments. In the middle of asking searching questions about the horrors that Iran has forced on its people, the movie always finds the time for absurdist, bitter humour.
The 104-minute film goes beyond confronting authoritarianism, raising unsolvable dilemmas about revenge, justice and forgiveness. Although derailed by a sub-plot revolving around Eghbal’s pregnant wife, the narrative gets back on track with an unsparing finale.
It Was Just An Accident doesn’t have the smoothness or coherence of Panahi’s No Bears (2022). That meta-fiction starred Panahi as a director trying to make a film whose actors want to flee Iran – a possibility that Panahi’s character also contemplates.
The outcome of the decision to stay is there in It Was Just An Accident. Panahi’s most blatant movie is inchoate at times, almost suggesting that this too is the result of decades-long crushing. When voices are constantly throttled, only senseless shrieks can emerge.
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