It Was Just an Accident (2025)
Jafar Panahi has spent much of the last fifteen years making films under conditions that would stop most directors outright. Arrested in 2010, banned from filmmaking and from leaving Iran, he has continued to work anyway, producing features on the quiet and smuggling them out to festival circuits while the Iranian authorities periodically remind the world he exists by detaining him again. His 2022 return from a fresh spell of imprisonment, and the films that preceded it, cemented his reputation not merely as a talented director but as a kind of living argument for the stubbornness of artistic conscience. It Was Just an Accident, which had its world premiere at Cannes 2025, arrives in that context. Shot without a permit, co-produced through a network of European partners including Les Films Pelléas and ARTE France Cinéma, and subsequently selected by France as its submission to the Academy Awards, the film sits squarely in the tradition of Iranian cinema that finds formal invention and moral seriousness operating in the same tight space. If you want a sense of how that tradition developed, Asghar Farhadi's The Salesman offers a useful point of comparison, a film equally preoccupied with guilt, memory, and the weight of past harm pressing on the present.
The premise is, on the surface, a fairly classical thriller set-up. A mechanic, ordinary and unassuming, finds himself convinced that a man he has stumbled across is the very prison guard who tormented him during a spell in an Iranian jail. What follows is less a conventional chase or confrontation film and more a sustained moral and psychological pressure test, as the mechanic and a rotating group of fellow former prisoners try to determine whether their suspicion is correct and, if so, what on earth they are prepared to do about it. Panahi draws on recognisable strands of Iranian filmmaking, the stripped-back realism, the long scenes built almost entirely on conversation, the sense that the camera is a witness rather than a manipulator, without simply repeating himself. The cast is led by Vahid Mobasseri as the mechanic and Mariam Afshari, with Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, and the director's own son Majid Panahi filling out a tight ensemble. None of these are especially famous names outside Iran, but that relative anonymity works in the film's favour, lending the story the quality of something overheard rather than performed for an audience. It is worth noting, too, that Panahi has a long history of working with non-professional or semi-professional actors to exactly this effect, a habit shared by contemporaries such as Mohsen Makhmalbaf, whose Salaam Cinema remains one of the great illustrations of what Iranian cinema can do when it blurs the line between documentary instinct and fictional construction.
At 104 minutes, It Was Just an Accident is a measured, patient piece of work, the kind of film that earns its emotional weight through accumulation rather than incident. The co-production arrangement with Luxembourg's Bidibul Productions and France's Pio & Co reflects the practical reality that Panahi increasingly relies on European infrastructure to bring his work to international audiences, a situation with its own uncomfortable ironies given the subject matter. The film has been praised on the festival circuit as one of the more personally felt works of his career, drawing clear lines between his own documented experiences of imprisonment and the fictional world he has constructed here. For audiences already familiar with the broader landscape of dissident or politically constrained filmmaking, the comparison with Walter Salles' I'm Still Here, another recent film built around state terror and its long aftermath, is one worth keeping in mind.
I’ve always been consistently impressed with Iranian cinema, and Jafar Panahi’s 2025 film It Was Just an Accident is a brilliant, defiant example of why.
The premise is incredibly gripping: an unassuming mechanic is suddenly plunged back into the trauma of his time in an Iranian prison when he encounters a man he suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor. What makes the film's very existence so remarkable is that Panahi managed to shoot it entirely without a permit. It was later submitted by France to the Academy Awards on behalf of Iran, and after watching it, I can confidently say it thoroughly deserves those nominations.
The narrative approach is fascinating, opening with a touch of comedy that perfectly encapsulates that old saying: "If I didn't laugh, I'd be crying." It’s a brilliant tonal tightrope that slowly gives way to a deeply harrowing story, one that is a grim reality for so many people and clearly echoes Panahi’s own real-life experiences with the regime.
I will admit, this is an incredibly slow-paced film. It’s built on long, drawn-out scenes and incredibly heavy dialogue, which means it probably won't appeal to everyone looking for a brisk, action-packed thriller. That being said, it is genuinely impressive just how much dense dialogue the actors had to remember and deliver flawlessly between takes, grounding the film in a raw, theatrical authenticity.
All that deliberate, dialogue-heavy pacing builds steadily toward a climax that completely justifies the slow burn. Without giving away any spoilers, the finale is really hard-hitting, delivering a devastating emotional payload that recontextualises everything you’ve just watched. It’s a masterful piece of storytelling that trusts its audience to sit with the discomfort and the profound moral questions it raises. This is absolutely one of those rare films that will stay with me for a long time, lingering in the back of my mind long after the screen fades to black.
It Was Just an Accident is a brave, deeply personal, and incredibly rewarding piece of cinema from a director who refuses to be silenced. While its deliberate pacing and heavy reliance on dialogue might test the patience of some, the sheer emotional weight and the brilliant performances more than make up for it. Jafar Panahi has crafted a testament to the resilience of the human spirit in the face of absolute tyranny.
It’s a challenging but profoundly moving watch that stands as a towering achievement in modern Iranian cinema. If you like this, check out A Salesman and A Separation.
It Was Just an Accident will not be for every Friday night. It asks for patience, a tolerance for moral ambiguity, and a willingness to sit with questions it has no interest in resolving tidily. But taken on its own terms, it is a film that rewards the attention it demands, arriving from circumstances that make its very existence feel like a small act of defiance. Panahi continues to make the films he needs to make, whatever the personal cost, and that stubbornness is inseparable from what ends up on screen. Some directors make films about resistance. Panahi makes films resistantly, and the difference, in the end, is everything.
Rating: ★★★½ | Year: 2025 | Watched: 2026-07-08
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for It Was Just an Accident (2025) on YouTube
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