Lauded Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi’s latest feature, It Was Just an Accident, just had its world premiere in Competition here at the Cannes Film Festival. The afternoon screening was met with a 10-minute ovation — and was highly significant because Panahi himself was in attendance. This is the first time he has been able to appear at the festival in over 20 years.
It Was Just an Accident has a one-line synopsis that reads: “What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.”
Panahi, whose credits also include The White Balloon, The Circle and Taxi, has spent most of his filmmaking career in the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic government, including more than a decade facing multiple detentions, prison sentences, house arrests and filmmaking and travel bans.
He was released from his latest jail stint in February 2023, and in the production notes for It Was Just an Accident, he says: “The sentence that banned me from making films, writing, giving interviews and traveling has been officially annulled. But in practice, I remain on the margins. … I have no choice but to keep working outside the system.”
The filmmaker employed clandestine methods to shoot It Was Just an Accident and said that before wrapping, “plainclothes officers turned up and demanded all the footage. I refused. They continued to put pressure on us by threatening to arrest the crew and shut down production. In the end, they gave up. We paused the shoot for a while, then resumed. Nothing further happened.”
Panahi’s first feature, The White Balloon (1995), was selected for Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, where it won the Caméra d’Or. He returned to th Croisette with 2003’s Crimson Gold, which played in Un Certain Regard and won the Jury Prize. Initially selected to represent Iran at the Oscars, Crimson Gold ultimately was banned by the authorities, preventing it from being shown in Iranian cinemas.
In 2009, Panahi was arrested for the first time and the following year was sentenced to a 20-year ban from directing films, writing screenplays, giving interviews to the press or leaving Iran, under threat of a six-year prison sentence.
Panahi nevertheless continued to make movies in secret. His This Is Not a Film was shot entirely in his apartment and screened Out of Competition in Cannes in 2011. His 2013 film Closed Curtain won the Silver Bear for Best Screenplay in Berlin, then in 2015, Taxi took the Golden Bear. Three Faces (2017) competed in Cannes and won the Best Screenplay prize.
On July 11, 2022, Panahi was arrested and would not be released until February 2023, after a hunger strike. Later that year, he was thought to have left Iran for the first time in 14 years.
Also in the film’s production notes, Panahi states that he opts to continue residing in Iran. “I can’t live anywhere else. Many of my fellow Iranians have chosen – or have been forced – to emigrate. But I can’t do that. I don’t have the courage! I’m unfit to live outside Iran. We’ll see what happens. In any case, this film had to be made. I made it, and I’ll accept whatever consequences may follow.”
