IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

Iran | DCP | 2025 | 101 min. | Farsi with English subtitles
Director: Jafar Panahi
Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi

At a car repair shop in the middle of the night, a former political prisoner encounters a man he believes to be the guard who tortured him. But how can he be sure, when he was blindfolded the whole time? A revenge saga as only master filmmaker Jafar Panahi could make it, It Was Just an Accident is morally complex, darkly comic, and absolutely gripping.  Following a nearly 20-year ban on filmmaking—a period during which he nevertheless directed and starred in five daring hybrid features—Pahani’s triumphant return to narrative cinema deservedly won the Palme d’Or at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. (MK)