Jafar Panahi has mastered the art of restraint, and to an extent, not by choice. After a 20-year ban on filmmaking imposed on him by the Iranian government, he has had to practice creativity under immense restriction, filming in secret and directing remotely through a laptop. With Panahi’s latest, It Was Just an Accident, the Palme d’Or-winning triumph of 2025, he’s broken through the restrictions on his freedom through an exploration of revenge told by an ensemble cast that is simultaneously fierce, angry, hilarious, and hopeful.
It Was Just an Accident opens on a man driving through a moonlit Tehran with his wife and daughter, when he hits a dog. The family stumbles to a garage where a mechanic, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), recognizes the sound of the man’s creaking wooden leg. Years prior, Vahid was imprisoned and tormented by a guard the prisoners nicknamed “peg leg.” The next day, Vahid decides to kidnap the man, Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), almost burying him alive before Eghbal claims he is not the tormentor. Vahid then runs into several fellow ex-prisoners driving around Tehran in a white van, playing moral chess on whether or not to kill Eghbal.
From this point on, the film spirals into chaos, yet with undeniable cinematic control. A highlight of the film is several long, extremely reflective shots that read like plays. Characters moving slowly through scenes, long monologues in singular locations, waiting for a decision that seems inevitable yet impossible to make. Towards the end of the film, ten minutes are taken up by a still, medium shot of a blindfolded Eghbal tied to a tree. Director of Photography Amin Jafari’s choice to never move creates a powerful face-to-face confrontation with Eghbal. The ensemble cast of six has now been whittled down to two, Vahid and Shiva (Mariam Afshari), and in this moment, all of the pent-up anger and despair explode within the confined frame of a shot that never moves.
It is an intense and disquieting scene, as we watch those who were once victims finally gain power over their abuser. Shiva yells in Eghbal’s ear, anguished, “I am a zombie, living with the walking dead.” The trauma of the prison has not once receded, but rather, has begun to decay: an untreated wound of the brain. Even as the roles are finally reversed, the scene is most devastating when Vahid and Shiva realize that no amount of revenge can truly heal. That the violence enacted upon them could never be overcome by becoming violent. The discipline of the scene speaks through Panahi’s voice, not just in that he is the writer or the director, but perhaps that he is, too, Vahid, Shiva, and every character within the ensemble.
Jafar Panahi was arrested in July 2022 for demanding information on fellow arrested Iranian filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Aleahmad. He was released six and a half months later. This was not Panahi’s first arrest, which occurred during a twenty-year ban on filmmaking and leaving the country, first imposed on Panahi in 2010 for propaganda against the government. It Was Just an Accident, like most of his recent work, which was filmed in secret and without permission from the Iranian government. Looking back at films like Taxi and This Is Not a Film, Panahi’s work often pushed the boundaries of filmmaking, creating loopholes when there was no other way to create art. Panahi also often starred in these films, creating wonderfully complex and often meta exercises of the form. They blurred the lines between documentary and fiction, strengthening the arguments Panahi makes about art, politics, and freedom.
However, It Was Just an Accident feels different. For one, and perhaps most initially obvious, Panahi does not star in this film. Moreover, the docufiction style that Panahi previously employed is absent here. Unless it isn’t. What makes It Was Just an Accident so powerful, so unforgiving, and so freeing is that it’s a story rooted in an existing truth. And what we experience over the course of a hundred minutes is a direct confrontation between Eghbal and the ensemble, but also Panahi’s ultimate confrontation with the government that restricted him from his practice and his freedom.
Panahi’s latest can be read as full of anger and seeking revenge; however, this diminishes much of the film’s power. While its characterization as revengeful emphasizes the film’s courage and bravery, there’s an even more poignant bravery in its exploration of hope. Jafar Panahi recognizes, better than anybody, how easy and rational the anger rooted in this trauma is. After all, he’s lived through the torment that his characters struggle to process. Perhaps what takes the most courage is to be hopeful despite the innate desire for revenge.
During a Q&A at the Film Forum, Panahi was asked, almost bitterly, why the characters ultimately decide not to kill their tormenter, when it seemed an obvious choice. Panahi looked towards the audience with a stillness and asked about the cycle of violence. When and where is the end, and how do we get there? What does justice mean, and what does freedom mean? Panahi never answered the questions he posed, at least concretely. But perhaps we can make a start with where this film ends: how can violence end when the response is to continue the cycle? An ode to the people that stayed imprisoned when Panahi finally exited in 2023, an ode to cinema and the responsible practice of the form, but above all else, an ode to freedom and the human gift to feel the full range of emotion, no matter how joyful or how angry it can be. The restraint possessed by Jafar Panahi’s hands as he writes, directs, and tells this story allows for a message that exits the theater with the audience, too. A message of hope that resonates, that replays in minds long after the credits end, and the projectors have been switched off. It’s a hope for change that can grow, even in the most unlikely of places.