‘It Was Just an Accident’: Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or Winner Is a Compellingly Human Confrontation With Iran’s Internal Scars 

Alci Rengifo

It takes a master to conduct varying notes of drama, humor and social consciousness in one film. Iran’s Jafar Panahi does just that with his “It Was Just an Accident,” which won the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival. There is nothing accidental about the focus and intelligence Panahi applies to this story. For years recognized as one of his country’s major filmmakers, Panahi’s career has been its own dramatic roller coaster. The director has been arrested numerous times by the authorities for his work, sparking international condemnation. Some of his best films, like the great “No Bears,” have been shot in secret. Yet part of what makes this new work so special is how it isn’t a hopeless cry, but a reflection on life in the Islamic Republic that makes room for dark irony and a bitter laugh or two.

Panahi opens on a darkened road where a husband (Ebrahim Azizi) drives with his wife and young daughter. They hit what sounds like a dog. The daughter reacts with sadness. The mom blames it on God and the darkness due to a lack of street lights. When the car breaks down the family pulls into a nearby factory for help. While the car gets fixed, one of the workers, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), freezes when he hears the squeak of the husband’s prosthetic leg. Vahid is convinced this man must be the intelligence officer of the regime who tortured him years ago. Compelled by a furious need for reckoning, Vahid seeks out the man in the city and knocks him out before throwing him into the back of his van. He then contacts a group of fellow former prisoners including a photographer named Shiva (Mariam Afshari), Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), who is about to get married with Ali (Madj Panahi), and Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a hothead who could snap at any moment. Together they struggle with trying to determine if their prisoner is indeed the torturer everyone knew as Peg Leg. 

Iranian cinema has a historical kinship with the kind of artists that emerged out of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the four decades since the Iranian Revolution of 1979, the country has produced filmmakers of international renown who find themselves working in a sort of cat and mouse situation with their government. Panahi and his crew shot “It Was Just an Accident” without permits. He is technically banned from making movies yet still finds a way to travel internationally to represent his team’s work. Like Cuba’s Tomás Gutiérrez Alea, Panahi’s work is critical and universal, beautifully structured and almost literary in its narrative quality. The director, who began his career as an assistant to the great Abbas Kiarostami, maintains his eloquent, grounded style while also becoming bolder with this film. The themes are becoming less subtle and by the end, he truly takes aim at the ruling system.

The premise of Panahi’s screenplay has the gripping quality of mysteries like Ariel Dorfman’s “Death and the Maiden.” Entire worlds and backstories are built around the question of whether the man locked in the van is who the ensemble suspects he may be. They were all blindfolded under torture, so all they have to go on is sensory clues. Vahid recognizes the prosthetic leg’s squeak. Goli remembers the man’s sweaty smell. Hamid, clearly left nearly deranged by PTSD, recognizes the scars on the man’s other leg, remembering his torturer boasting that he received them while fighting in Syria. A darkly comedic, even quirky, road trip follows where the group must keep their captive secret, pay bribes to security guards in parking lots and deal with the prisoner’s ringing cell phone. Then there is the central debate everyone must grapple with. What will they do if this is the dreaded Peg Leg? Kill him? Torture him? It is a brilliant way of encompassing the microscopic existence and questions of life under an authoritarian regime. The 2022 “Women, Life, Freedom” protests in Iran, which erupted after the death of a woman arrested by the country’s infamous Morality Police, grabbed worldwide headlines. Unseen are the many lives living in the aftershocks, no doubt having endured prison and torture for those who spearheaded protests.

The performances in “It Was Just an Accident” are of that special quality where never once do we ponder these individuals as “actors.” Vahid Mobasseri, as the gentler member of the group, was memorable in Panahi’s “No Bears” as a friendly villager in a rural corner of Iran where a filmmaker (played by Panahi) gets caught in the middle of a blood feud. Here he must traverse between feelings of fear that gradually transform into rage. Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr is another standout as the angriest member of the group who wouldn’t think twice about killing their captive. Conversations are masterfully performed without the need of extended monologues or overloaded exposition. As a result, we feel we’re in the van with these characters and asking the same questions dominating their minds. They represent a sector of Iranian society that feels the weight of the system because they became targets. Life all around them continues despite their pain, at times captured with moments of moving hilarity, as when the group finds itself having to suddenly rush a pregnant woman to the hospital. 

A film like this can feel refreshing in the current landscape. Even some of the best recent American dramas still feel that need of expressing themselves with flashy exuberance. With the naturalistic lighting of cinematographer Amin Jafari, Panahi grips with pure characters, dialogue and story. An artist like this pulls every story from his deepest self and experiences. There is a moment in the film where a man expresses his loyalty to the regime, delivered with chilling brilliance, lacking hyperbole. It is one of Panahi’s most piercing artistic statements on what dissidents in Iran are up against. At the same time, it confirms he doesn’t see the situation as a struggle against some mysterious leviathan. Real life, like revolutions and ideologies, is too complex for lazy simplifications.  These characters are demanding some kind of justice in a world where genuine freedom still feels distant. This is exquisite filmmaking and one of the year’s best.

“It Was Just an Accident” releases Oct. 15 in New York, Oct. 17 in Los Angeles, and Oct. 31 in select theaters.