Jafar Panahi comes to Sydney Film Festival at the last minute to open Palme-d'Or-winning film It Was Just An Accident

Australia Broadcast Center

19 hours ago

When I was first told that celebrated Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was heading to Sydney for the Australian premiere of his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, it was so hush-hush he wasn't even named. I had to guess it was him from an oblique hint.
Why all the secrecy?
Because Panahi, a hero of world cinema, has been persecuted by the Iranian government, serving time in prison and under house arrest for daring to shoot his "social" films, as he calls them. Banned at home, they often feature non-professional actors and detail the intricate complexities of life in the theocratic republic.
It's only very recently that Panahi has been allowed to leave the country, including to pick up the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival, the Palme d'Or, for It Was Just an Accident in May.
It was a tenuous détente, no doubt reached because of the high esteem in which Panahi is held globally. This is why Sydney Film Festival didn't want to risk endangering Panahi by announcing the visit.
Instead, he appeared onstage at the State Theatre during the opening night speeches to thunderous applause. Two days later, we sit down together with a translator over coffee at the Park Royal Darling Harbour, to discuss why his thought-provoking films are worth risking his freedom. Panahi is wearing his trademark black, including shades, indoors.
"When you are in pain over something and it is tickling at you, you say, 'I must make a movie,'" Panahi says of his inescapable commitment to many causes.
"Everything is happening from a simple accident, and then you have a duty of care. You are not separated from your movie."
Simple accidents they may be, but Panahi takes these intense moments of personal experience and spins them into intriguing morality plays that rattle the bars holding Iranian citizens back.
"The changes I feature are borne out of society," says the filmmaker, who was mentored by Iranian New Wave leading light Abbas Kiarostami.
He has long followed the evolution of women's rights in Iran. His third feature, The Circle (2000), addresses access to abortions and sex work. Six years later, his joyous Offside is centred on plucky young women who flout the ban on attending a World Cup qualifying match.
The hijab-law-rejecting protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini broke out during Panahi's second, and most recent, stint in prison — this time alongside several fellow political prisoners.
It was 2022, with Panahi's self-starring feature, No Bears, debuting at the Venice Film Festival in his absence.
"Bits and pieces of the news would come to us, but we really didn't know what the people on the street were experiencing," Panahi says.
A strange turn of events would allow him a closer look, when an insect bite sparked a persistent skin problem. "The doctor in jail couldn't really help," Panahi recalls. "I needed to see a specialist. I had to request this for two or three months."
Eventually, he was placed in handcuffs and bundled in the back of a van with darkened windows to attend the specialist.
"They didn't want me to see anything, but I could, through the front windshield," he notes of his stolen glimpse at the protests. "I could see that the city has already changed."
Now, Panahi says he cannot make another film in which all of the women on the street are wearing a hijab.
"I would be telling a lie," he says. "What am I supposed to do when the politicians are running behind for 20 years?"
Panahi is heartened that audiences worldwide have embraced his portraits of a nation in flux, including the complete celebration of his work at the Sydney Film Festival leading up to the local debut of It Was Just an Accident. It screens alongside all of his previous features in Jafar Panahi: Cinema in Rebellion.
The new feature is drawn from Panahi's experience of interrogation, after being held in solitary confinement during his first stretch inside. It poses the question: what would you do if you were confronted with the man you think was your interrogator? Would you demand answers? Show mercy? Or opt for revenge?
He says the best part of being free again and able to travel, however risky, is sitting with audiences as they experience the film.
"The Iranian government put a distance between us and the viewers," Panahi says.
"They didn't allow us to make that connection. But now I can sit with them and see which part of the movie works and which is not OK."
After all he has been through, you'd forgive Panahi if he walked away from his home country. But — as with a beautiful moment in No Bears where he, playing a version of himself, stands on the border with Turkey — he has no intention of doing so.
"I didn't put my foot on the other side of the border," he says. "I came back. I do not want to exchange my life for anything else. Life in Iran is not difficult for me. Life outside is. I cannot live anywhere else."
Editing It Was Just an Accident in France for three months was too long away for Panahi.
"Every day I said, 'I cannot survive here. I cannot continue in here. I must go home.'"
It Was Just an Accident marks its Australian debut at the Sydney Film Festival on Friday, May 13, alongside a retrospective of Panahi's films.