‘It Was Just An Accident’ review: A raw, powerful debate on justice and revenge in Iran
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One of Iranian cinema’s most fearless directors, Jafar Panahi has stood firm against his country’s repeated efforts to muzzle him. The greater the efforts to restrain Panahi through bans and arrests, the more vigorous his straining at the leash.
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Already a keen critic of injustice, corruption and normalised tyranny in Iranian society, Panahi’s films became darker and bleaker with This Is Not a Film (2011), created while he was under house arrest for supporting the opposition during the country’s national election. The subsequent movies, made clandestinely and in between jail stints, are of a piece. They reflect with unstinting frankness and absurdist humour the psychological state of a filmmaker staring down censorship.
Panahi’s latest movie It Was Just An Accident (2025) explores the dilemma that arises when the accused become the accusers. The Oscar-nominated film is out on MUBI.
An incident on a highway brings together a man with a prosthetic leg, a mechanic, a photographer, the photographer’s ex-boyfriend and a bethrothed couple. When Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) first meets Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), he is convinced that Eghbal is the man who tortured him in prison.
Vahid kidnaps Eghbal and takes him to other similarly afflicted prisoners – the photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari), Shiva’s former partner Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr) and Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), who...