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| Images courtesy of NEON |
Iranian born writer-director-editor-cinematographer-actor
Jafar Panahi against authoritarian repression, censorship and house arrest has
prevailed as one of the frontrunners if not the poster child of the Iranian New
Wave. A neorealist auteur whose works
are synonymous with countercultural revolutionary aspects highlighting
political oppression and regime restrictions on the Iranian populace, Panahi
was entrenched in cinema from the age of twelve through his wartime experiences
in the Iran-Iraq in the early 1980s as an army cinematographer. Upon his debut 1995 film The White Balloon
co-written with legendary Palme d’Or winning Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami,
Panahi quickly built up an entire oeuvre of films either banned outright in
their country of origin or otherwise made illegally without the approval or
supervision of authorities. Against an
arrest, six year prison sentence and twenty year ban on filmmaking and travel,
Panahi nevertheless went on to win the Golden Lion at Venice for The Circle,
the Golden Bear at Berlin for Taxi and now the coveted Cannes Palme d’Or
for his latest 2025 ensemble dramedy It Was Just An Accident which
cemented Panahi alongside Henri-Georges Clouzot, Michelangelo Antonioni and
Robert Altman as one of four directors in the world to win the top three film
festival awards.
Released theatrically in Europe and picked up for domestic
release by NEON, the French-Iran-Luxembourg coproduction It Was Just An
Accident is a deceptively simple exercise in ensemble politicized dramedy
that is at once interpretive and crystal clear in its aims. One night, a man with a prosthetic leg
driving home with his wife and daughter inadvertently run over a dog and
ventures to an Azerbaijani auto mechanic named Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) for
repairs. Upon hearing his voice and the
sound of his peg leg Vahid becomes convinced that the man is in fact Eghbal, a
former brutal tormentor within the Iranian government and military body who
once imprisoned and tortured the mechanic, and he kidnaps and tries to bury the
man alive in the desert. However, as he
starts the burial he grows unsure and ventures out recruiting fellow peers
including a wedding photographer named Shiva (Mariam Afshari occasionally not
wearing the hijab against Iranian law), engaged bride-to-be Goli and Ali who
reveals she was tortured by Eghbal and Shiva’s former partner Hamid (Mohamed
Ali Elyasmehr) to verify whether or not the captive is in fact their former
torturer. It doesn’t help that everyone
was originally blindfolded when they were captured and never saw their tormenter’s
face.
Filmed in secrecy without a permit from the Islamic Republic
and sold throughout the world by Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me distributor
MK2 before being picked up by NEON for limited theatrical release, the film
like many of Panahi’s others is at once a lightning rod for controversy in its
native country and a freeing almost tragicomic exercise in pure genre
cinema. At times evoking the ensemble
screwball hilarities of fellow Palme d'Or winners Parasite and Anora
replete with running gags involving the unlikely group of ex-prisoners banding
together to push a van out of gas on the open highway with a bound and gagged
human inside it, It Was Just An Accident has a neorealist approach of
using real locations and non-professional actors working under the radar. Featuring visually arresting bright daytime
sequences and almost brighter nighttime vistas rendered by Amin Jafari, sharp
editing by Amir Etminan and a brilliant sound design with striking foley
effects by Gregory Vincent for the dreaded sound of the prosthetic peg leg, the
film is a taut and pristine vision of modern day Iran as the powers that be don’t
want you to see it.
Every performer here making up the ensemble cast from Vahid
Mobasseri to Ebrahim Azizi as the kidnapped man to Mariam Afshari who as
previously mentioned daringly takes her hijab on and off like a hat to the
child actress Delmaz Najafi playing the kidnapped man’s daughter aren’t just
giving their all to melodrama, they’re channeling a very real world deep seated
rage and anger onto the screen. It feels
as though their acrimony isn’t just performative but genuine as though these
actors onscreen have lived through every bit of the ordeal their characters
have. Scenes of all the actors in a car
with the kidnapped man fighting one another off from outright killing the man
in vengeance take on an electric energy that is palpable to such a degree you
feel for the performers who might not be merely acting. That Panahi, who went on a hunger strike
before being released from prison in 2023, was able to garner such believable
performances from everyone involved is a testament to his extraordinary and
gifted ability to command untrained actors into something more than just
another show.
Currently in release in the United States as it scours movie
festivals throughout the world and theaters throughout the nation, It Was
Just An Accident is a movie that is simultaneously funny, moving,
politically charged and finally chilling.
A work of minimalism whose subtle use of sound and image are evocative of
a multitude of emotions from anger, confusion and fear sometimes playing for
our amusement when it isn’t mostly horrific, the Iranian dramedy represents an
important work of modern world cinema whose dilemmas are at once specific to
Iran and also relatable to anyone who has been on the receiving end of a
merciless sadist in a position of power.
The kind of film that will hit viewers in ways they’ve never thought of
or expected before while also actively functioning as a work of political resistance
in a repressive country, It Was Just An Accident is one of the very best
and sneakily, quietly powerful exercises in cinematic devastation that has ever
been unveiled upon the world entire. Hard
to forget as well as hard to believe it was all pulled off under such a
Sisyphean uphill battle.
--Andrew Kotwicki
