It Was Just an Accident: The Most Important (And Best) Film of the Year
By Paul Reiley
Jafar Panahi was apprehended and imprisoned by the Iranian government in March 2010 for attempting to create a documentary surrounding citizens’ response to the 2009 reelection of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. This election sparked mass protests and violence, with many people considering the results to be fraudulent. By documenting these events, Panahi was accused of crafting “propaganda against the regime.” For his supposed national betrayal, Panahi was swiftly imprisoned for six years and is currently barred from traveling and filming in Iran, but he still chooses to continue his work. All of this is crucial context for his latest feature, It Was Just an Accident.
The film follows an Azerbaijani mechanic who kidnaps a man with a prosthetic leg. Vahid, the mechanic, was taken as a political prisoner many years ago. He takes his hostage to the desert and attempts to bury him alive, believing that he was once the man who endlessly tortured him in an Iranian prison. When doubt crawls its way into Vahid’s mind, he decides to seek out fellow victims of “Peg Leg,” the nickname prescribed to this man, hoping to determine if he really is the man that ruined their lives, and what to do with him if so. Panahi chooses to film all his works, including this movie, in his home country of Iran, despite being banned from traveling and filming there. He works illegally with a tiny cast and crew, and often films without the proper permits, keeping his movies secret until they premiere. For example, he broke the law when shooting It Was Just an Accident by frequently portraying the actresses without a hijab. This is one of the many underlying critiques of the Iranian regime featured in the movie. Before it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie was largely a secret, described as “a tightly guarded mystery film” by Italian film critic Davide Abbatescianni. After its first screening, it was met with universal acclaim and won the top prize at Cannes: the Palme d’Or. This was a rightfully-deserved award that recognized Jafar Panahi as one of our most important contemporary filmmakers.
It Was Just an Accident is a quiet condemnation of authoritarian regimes that grows louder over the course of its runtime. It dissects the individual actors and systematic foundations in these corrupted societies, focusing on how they support or eventually consume each other, and how we break this cycle of violence. The film asks how we expunge these systems, hoping to reach some sense of peace for victimized people, and ending the dehumanization that everyone feels, on some level.
The film’s structure ties the revealing of information with thematic tension in an increasingly engrossing manner. We follow Vahid as he meets with four other political prisoners who were tortured by the man he now holds captive to determine if he really is a key contributor to this oppressive system. The first half of the film indirectly creates chapters for each person Vahid encounters. Every once-imprisoned person subsequently becomes more and more extreme in their position on what they should do and their opinion regarding violence as justice. Salar, the only person Vahid is personally affiliated with, finds the situation borderline reprehensible. He refuses to identify the kidnapped amputee, or even see him, believing that enacting violence on their oppressors would make them nearly the same. However, this worldview is not concrete for Salar. After ruminating on the problem, he hands Vahid a note with the phone number of another released prisoner, telling him to find her. This leads to a continuous involvement of people into this journey that intersects identification and revenge.
Each person they pick up grows more violent with what they want to do with “Peg Leg,” taking the intensity of the experience up a notch. Each succeeding member of this newly-formed group also reveals crucial information to help the audience to grasp what they really went through. The film subtly raises questions to brew on and then answers them in increasingly shocking ways, from why they were captured, what they went through in jail, and what happened to members of their family. These answers and more get slowly revealed throughout the film.
The structure is invigorating: by heightening the murderous undercurrent and drip-feeding disturbingly captivating information, the viewer feels as if they are with these people in this morally complex escapade. The film culminates this buildup with two specific shots in particular, one near the middle and one near the end. These images are held on for minutes, yet they are by far the most captivating sequences in the film. These climatic portraits of visceral emotion reveal so much about what the film is saying and what these complex characters truly represent.
Each member of this ensemble is perfect; about four of the very best performances of the year are featured in this film. Every character is so deeply shaped by what they went through in the Iranian prisons, from their general worldview surrounding an array of intricate topics—all tackled thoughtfully by the film—to their small mannerisms and gestures. Their experience has become a foundation of who they truly are, the same way the oppressive regime has become an ever-present force in Iran itself. This is exemplified by the exact point the movie chooses to end. With a single incredibly effective provocative sound, the film surgically dissects the lingering poison of authoritarianism. It’s a shocking moment that recontextualizes everything in the film that led up to this point.
In Panahi’s acceptance speech for the Palme d’Or, he expressed the complex emotions that stem from this win. He spoke about the guilt he carries for being able to stand there in that moment, while many of his fellow Iranian filmmakers cannot: "[H]ow I could be happy, how I could feel free, if they were still inside." He continued, "Today, I'm here with you, I receive this joy, but I feel the same emotion. How can I rejoice? How can I be free while in Iran, there are still so many of the greatest directors and actresses of Iranian cinema, who, because they participated in and supported the demonstrators during the Femme Liberté movement, are today prevented from working?"
On October 10, 2025, Panahi spoke to playwright and actor Jeremy O. Harris about filmmaking while authoritarianism is on the rise for Interview magazine. Even with a lack of confidence, Panahi said he believes the path forward is resilience and the dismantling of continuously violent practices. These ideas tieIt Was Just an Accidenttogether with his personal experiences of the oppressive Iranian regime. Panahi’s life informs his art, both explicitly and implicitly.