Un Simple Accident

There's a lot to say about this film. If there's one thing Iranians share as a nation, it's intergenerational trauma, rage, and hatred toward the last two regimes - one, the other, or both - and the lingering question of what to do with all that, with or without the current regime. This masterpiece by Jafar Panahi captures it perfectly.

Watched on Sydney Film Festival 2025

Jafar Panahi's Palme d'Or winner, It Was Just an Accident, isn't just a film; it's a gripping, morally fraught journey that grabs you and refuses to let go long after the credits roll. Forget a simple fender bender - this story ignites when a minor traffic scrape leads former political prisoner Vahid to believe he's cornered "Peg Leg," the man who brutally tortured him years before. Talk about wrong place, wrong time... or is it?

Panahi plunges us straight into the suffocating tension. Vahid gathers fellow survivors, each etched with their own raw pain and simmering rage, turning a car ride into a claustrophobic tribunal. Their desperate mission? To confirm the terrified captive Ebrahim Azizi's identity and decide his fate. It's here the film truly digs its claws in, forcing you to grapple alongside them: Where does the desperate need for justice end and the cycle of vengeance begin? Can victims ever be justified in mirroring their oppressor's cruelty? Panahi masterfully blurs these lines, offering zero easy outs.

The brilliance lies in the raw humanity. While exploring the primal pull of revenge - that fierce, almost instinctive reclaiming of power - the film never loses sight of the complex, painful possibility of forgiveness. It's not presented as some saintly virtue, but as a messy, agonising internal battle played out on the faces of a stunningly authentic, mostly non-professional cast. Their barely contained fury sits right alongside profound vulnerability. Can empathy survive such deep scars?

Don't mistake this for unrelenting gloom, though. Panahi weaves in moments of sharp, absurdist gallows humour that land perfectly, highlighting the surreal contradictions of life under the boot. Visually restrained but emotionally potent, the film relies on evocative camerawork and powerhouse subtle performances. The deliberate pacing makes you sit with every gut-wrenching dilemma and fleeting connection.

Ultimately, It Was Just an Accident transcends revenge thriller territory. A pivotal, unexpected third-act twist delivers a stunning gut-punch: a stark reminder that even amidst profound trauma, a flicker of human compassion can endure. The devastating climax and its haunting final moments linger, leaving you with a fragile sense of hope wrestled from the jaws of despair. Panahi crafts a defiant, unforgettable cinematic challenge - a film that doesn't just tell a story, but forces you to confront the darkest corners of justice, power, and whether healing is even possible. It demands your attention and refuses to offer simple answers. Fair crack of the whip, this one sticks with you.

A pervasive, persistent wave of dread courses through this propulsive 2025 revenge thriller, but what impressed me even more was the courage director/screenwriter Jafar Panahi displays throughout this engrossing film. Imprisoned several times over for his ongoing criticism of the corrupt Iranian government, Panahi has crafted a character-driven plot that follows a motley group of former Iranian political prisoners, each one reacting viscerally when faced with a moral dilemma as they believe their tormentor Eghbal ("Peg Leg") has reentered their lives. First, there's Vahid, an auto mechanic who upon this discovery, starts to bury him alive, but then his conscience leads him to seek out other victims who could validate Eghbal's identity. That includes Shiva, a wedding photographer Vahid has never met before; Goli and Ali, a betrothed couple; and Shiva's hotheaded former business partner Hamid. The non-professional cast is uniformly strong with standout turns from Vahid Mobasseri with the fullest character arc as Vahid and Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr as Hamid whose out-of-control outbursts instill genuine fear. The film climaxes dramatically with a single shot held for 12 minutes uninterrupted. A most uniquely compelling story told with surprising compassion.

It's supposedly meant to be a powerful film, and I do acknowledge its historical and political importance. But it simply didn't move me.

All the doubt and tension set up at the beginning seems to dissolve into mildly comic situations that never quite become truly funny.

The secondary characters come across as caricatures, and I couldn't bring myself to care about them.

In the final part-which I had expected to be dramatic and genuinely impactful-I found myself only wondering where it was all supposed to lead. The acting felt forced and didn't moved me.

Within minutes, people who were determined to kill suddenly give up in a comical outburst, and a villain suddenly seems to have a change of heart.

I really wanted to like this movie.

Iran is producing some of the best modern filmmakers working today, yet sadly, it is not reaping its artistic rewards. Many of these directors are choosing to leave the theocracy and make films elsewhere-or film in secret, risking imprisonment from censors. Last year brought the brilliant Oscar-nominated The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024), smuggled out of Iran by its now-exiled director Mohammad Rasoulof into Germany. This year, we have a similar case: Jafar Panahi, jailed for his filmmaking for years, delivers with It Was Just an Accident (2025), this year's Palme d'Or winner at Cannes, produced in France instead.

It Was Just an Accident takes place in Iran, where Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a car mechanic, suspects that a limping client (Ebrahim Azizi) who appears one night is his former torturer from when he was jailed for protesting unpaid wages. In an impulsive act, Vahid kidnaps the man, but just before he's ready to exact his revenge, doubt creeps in. Is he sure this is the right man? The film then follows Vahid as he seeks out former inmates who might identify his hostage, while also risking their own thirst for vengeance spinning out of control.

Panahi has long specialized in moral and societal dilemmas condensed into intimate settings. His previous film, No Bears (2022), followed an Iranian filmmaker harassed by censors and threatened with jail time, while his surrounding community watched passively. In It Was Just an Accident, Panahi explores the lives of the formerly incarcerated, honoring the permanent scars they carry even after walking free. Yet the film also poses the question of vengeance; its value, its futility, and its moral cost.

Panahi himself has much to resent, especially toward the jailers who suppressed his voice, art, and physical liberty for years. Yet It Was Just an Accident approaches injustice and cruelty not with wrath or righteous fury, but with empathy and moral ambiguity. The doubt that consumes Vahid-and infects viewers as they watch-is central to Panahi's humane perspective. Even as the film oscillates between convincing us of the suspect's guilt and innocence, we're left wondering whether even the death of a guilty man would bring peace or justice.

The film's moral debate unfolds through a chorus of former prisoners, each embodying a different response to trauma: from the wrathful to the despairing to the willfully ignorant. This ensemble finds coherence through Vahid, brilliantly embodied by Mobasseri, whose shifting expressions mirror our own uncertainty. At moments, Panahi even flirts with dark comedy, highlighting the absurdity of vengeance taken too far.

Panahi once again demonstrates his mastery of cinematic craft. He edits most scenes within a take or two, with the film's climax running nearly ten minutes uncut; a stunning showcase of confident blocking, lighting, and performance. The balance between darkness and absurdity, tragedy and irony, is handled with such precision that each tonal shift feels organic rather than jarring.

In the end, It Was Just an Accident stands as another example of the great cinema that Iran's repression is paradoxically inspiring and tragically missing out on. Panahi delivers an entertaining yet deeply thought-provoking moral drama, keeping viewers on edge with his fluid command of tone, performance, and storytelling. One can only hope his meditation on vengeance and empathy resonates far beyond the screen, especially among the world's leaders today.