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BBC News
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Cannes 25 : Jafar Panahi's "It Was Just an Accident" – A Darkly Humorous Triumph of Resistance
In a year marked by cinematic brilliance, the 78th Cannes Film Festival crowned Iranian film maker Jafar Panahi with the prestigious Palme d'Or for his latest work, "It Was Just an Accident". This Iranian drama tackles the legacy of state-sponsored torture with emotional precision, weaving themes of trauma, memory, justice, and unexpected levity. A Haunting Tale The narrative follows a former political prisoner who, upon a chance encounter with a man, becomes convinced he's face-to-face with his past torturer. A seemingly ordinary moment—a simple incident—jolts his memory. He hears a voice and is suddenly transported back to the interrogation room. Could this man in front of him be the one who tortured him? He can't be certain—his eyes were always blindfolded during those harrowing sessions. Darkness with Humour From there, director Jafar Panahi leads us into a haunting yet deeply engaging detective story. The protagonist seeks out fellow survivors, hoping to piece together the truth. What follows is a journey of collective memory, trauma, and camaraderie, where each character contributes a piece of the puzzle—and reveals their own scars. Panahi's genius lies in his ability to infuse dark subject matter with moments of humour. In scenes that could easily become unbearably heavy, the filmmaker dares to insert levity—not for cheap relief, but as a testament to the survivors' resilience. The audience laughs not because the pain is lessened, but because it is deeply human to seek light in the darkest of places. The film's epic climax—a confrontation between the survivors and the suspected torturer—is masterfully executed. The tension is suffocating, the emotions raw. You feel everything: rage, confusion, fear, even a glimmer of compassion. It's a scene where emotions run high and the lines between victim and perpetrator blur. The audience, much like the characters, is left questioning the nature of justice and the reliability of memory. In a masterstroke, Panahi reveals how easily perceptions can be manipulated, leaving viewers both shocked and contemplative. Lens Through Memory Visually, "It Was Just an Accident" is a triumph. The director uses the camera like a memory—often uncertain, jittery, sometimes fading in and out of clarity. Tight close-ups force us into the characters' emotional spaces, while stark lighting and muted palettes reflect the trauma that never truly leaves them. The cinematography turns small moments—a flicker of recognition, a trembling hand—into profound beats of storytelling. "It Was Just an Accident" is more than just a film; it's a testament to the power of storytelling in challenging oppressive systems. Panahi's ability to weave a tale that's both harrowing and humorous showcases his mastery as a filmmaker.
Digital Trends
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
3 great Hulu movies you need to stream this weekend (May 30-June 1)
For the final weekend of May, Hulu is adding one of the most important political dramas of 2024. The Seed of the Sacred Fig was made by Iranian filmmakers and actors who risked imprisonment for their involvement with the film. The fact that it was made at all feels like a miracle, and now it's an easy selection for one of the three great Hulu movies that you need to stream this weekend. Our other two picks for the week include a newly added sex comedy/drama and one of the few Star Wars films that's still on Hulu. But don't wait until the first day of June to watch that one. It's probably going home to Disney+ after May 31, so catch it while you can. Recommended Videos Need more recommendations? We also have guides to the best movies on Netflix, the best movies on Hulu, the best movies on Amazon Prime Video, the best movies on Max, and the best movies on Disney+. The Seed of the Sacred Fig (2024) The story behind the 2025 Oscar-nominated The Seed of the Sacred Fig is just as interesting and compelling as the film itself. Iranian writer and director Mohammad Rasoulof was forced to flee his country after making the movie, but stars Soheila Golestani and Missagh Zareh remain trapped in their homeland. Rasoulof set the story against the real uprising of young women in Iran who pushed back against the harsh religious restrictions placed upon what they could wear in public. Zareh plays Iman, a lawyer who gets his desired promotion to Iran's Revolutionary Court, only to realize that he's supposed to rubber-stamp the sentences brought before him without trial. Iman is also forbidden from telling his wife, Najmeh (Golestani), or their daughters, Rezvan (Mahsa Rostami) and Sana (Setareh Maleki), about his new job. He's also given a handgun for protection. When the gun goes missing, Iman becomes increasingly paranoid about the intentions of his wife and children, so much so that it may destroy their bond as a family. Watch The Seed of the Sacred Fig on Hulu. How to Please a Woman (2022) How to Please a Woman is an Australian sex comedy with some drama mixed in as well. Sally Phillips stars as Gina, a middle-aged woman who has an epiphany when her friends send her a stripper, Tom (Alexander England), for her birthday. It turns out that Gina doesn't want to have sex with Tom, but she is very turned on by watching him clean her house with his shirt off. That inspires Gina to save Tom's employers at a moving company and transform them into a cleaning service geared towards women that can also offer sexual gratification on the side. It's a very freeing decision by Gina, as she finally questions what she wants out of her now sexless marriage. But just because Gina feels liberated enough to ask those questions, it doesn't mean she'll like the answers she receives. Watch How to Please a Woman on Hulu. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016) Rogue One: A Star Wars Story will be on Hulu through at least May 31. Hulu hasn't confirmed it's leaving on June 1, but you should assume that it is. Rogue One is by far the best Star Wars movie in decades and the one that recaptures the flavor of the original trilogy more than any of the prequels or sequels. In the aftermath of Andor, the movie now plays very differently for a few characters who had larger parts on that show. Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) has a secondary role here to Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones), a young woman who unexpectedly holds the key to saving the Rebel Alliance from the Death Star. Jyn's father, Galen Erso (Mads Mikkelsen), helped build the Death Star, and the message he has for his daughter may help the rebels destroy it. But first, Jyn has to be convinced to accompany Cassian and his droid, K-2SO (Alan Tudyk), on a mission to a world under Imperial occupation. From there, it's clear that the only way to stop the Death Star is by stealing the plans from the most secure facility in the entire Empire. Watch Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on Hulu.
New York Times
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘The Sealed Soil': Modesty and Its Discontents
A hidden landmark from 1977, Marva Nabili's first feature, 'The Sealed Soil,' was made in secret in Iran under the Shah. It has never been shown there and although its qualities were immediately recognized in the United States, it has not been released here, until now. After a digital restoration by the Film and Television Archive of the University of California at Los Angeles and a flurry of recent festival screenings, Nabili's deceptively modest feature gets a weeklong run at Brooklyn Academy of Music. An opening quotation from Albert Camus, predicating an individual's maturity on even failed resistance to the status quo, heralds a leisurely shot of a young woman wrapping her chador. Eighteen-year-old Rooy-Bekheir (Flora Shabaviz) is engaged in a stubborn rebellion. Without explanation, she refuses her suitors. At the same time, she appears to silently oppose the construction of a modern town outside her village. The film's understatement mirrors that of its protagonist. Shot on 16-millimeter film, 'The Sealed Soil' is largely a series of straightforward middle-shots, many devoted to Rooy-Bekheir's daily chores. Lamps are lit, grain sifted and chickens fed, mostly within the confines of a dusty communal courtyard. The camera rarely moves. The post-dubbed sound is largely ambient, save for strange music that the solitary Rooy-Bekheir seems to hear when she nears the modern town. The girl's subjectivity is celebrated in the film's most mysterious scene. Resting in the woods and given a rare close-up, she languidly extends her hand to catch the soft rain. As it continues to fall, she undoes her chador and strips off her top. Face hidden, bare back to the camera she allows herself to be ravished by the elements. The village, however, wants her wed. Her mother, it is pointed out, had four children by age 18. Told that a new suitor is coming, Rooy-Bekheir uses her best dress to attack the chickens in the courtyard and is deemed to be possessed. The movie turns ethnographic, documenting an exorcism. Highly ritualized yet weirdly perfunctory, it evidently works. Nabili came to New York to study filmmaking in the 1970s, then returned to Iran to write and direct a television series based on classic Persian fairy tales. This project provided cover for 'The Sealed Soil' which, smuggled out of Iran, had its New York premiere in 1978, opening a Middle East Film Festival notable for including work by both Muslims and Jews. 'The Sealed Soil' was reported on in The New York Times and singled out for praise in the alternative press. Writing in The Village Voice, the Israeli film critic Dan Yakir compared it to Chantal Akerman's 'Jeanne Dielman,' which was both a blessing and a curse. Nabili, who will be present at several of the BAM screenings, has cited Robert Bresson as an influence, but 'The Sealed Soil' is not a would-be European art film. An act of clandestine resistance shot for a pittance at a two-to-one ratio with available light in six days and a cast of villagers (save for Shabaviz, who was married to the cinematographer), it is a triumph of what the Cuban film theorist Julio García Espinosa called 'imperfect' cinema. The film's pragmatism is intrinsic to its meaning.
The National
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The National
Woman and Child review: Iran's other Cannes Palme d'Or nominee should not be ignored
Following Jafar Panahi's Palme d'Or winner It Was Just An Accident, Woman and Child was the second Iranian film to play in this year's Cannes Film Festival main competition – and deserves to garner as much attention. Directed by Saeed Roustaee, it's another forceful work to come out of Iranian cinema at a time when filmmakers are under constant pressure in their homeland. In the case of Roustaee, he was given a suspended six months prison sentence for submitting his 2022 work Leila's Brothers to Cannes without making the necessary changes to appease the Ministry of Culture. His new film, Woman and Child, comes with an in-baked anger against the Iranian authorities. On the surface, it's a portrait of a single mother-of-two, living in modern-day Tehran. Mahnaz (Parinaz Izadyar) is an overworked nurse who's life is all harassment and little pleasure. She lives with her mother and younger sister Mehri (Soha Niasti), who lends a hand raising her two kids, the adorable Neda (Arshida Dorostkar) and the mischievous 14-year-old, Aliyar (Sinan Mohebi). Even Mahnaz's romantic life is anything but easy. After her husband passed away, she has been dating Hamid (Payman Maadi), an ambulance driver at the hospital where she works. He wants her to marry, given they have been together for two years, but she is refusing his proposals. Worse is to come, given Aliyar's behaviour at school. 'Your son is a monster' she is told, and he's certainly out of control, whether he's bullying other kids or posting videos of his frazzled teachers online. At one point, he idly breaks off a matchstick in the slot of a padlock, which chains the school gates, moments before crowds of children swarm to leave for the day. It leads to utter chaos, beautifully captured by Roustaee, who truly shows his cinematic eye throughout this film. Another striking moment comes as Aliyar runs down the stairs of his apartment block, the camera glancing down to show the cavernous interior, with its checkered floor, to some degree foreshadowing the fatal events to come. Woman and Child hinges on a midpoint narrative moment, a tragic event that changes everything, when Aliyar dies after falling from a window. At this point, he's being looked after by his grandfather (Hassan Pourshirazi), while Mahnaz is elsewhere, dealing with her potential future in-laws. Was it the grandfather's fault? The second hour of Woman and Child spirals as Mahnaz begins pursuing a legal case against her former father-in-law, as she plunges into Iran's byzantine legal system. You might call Woman and Child a melodrama, although the drama itself feels very real. While it's not as gripping as A Separation, Asghar Farhadi's award-winning tale about a couple undergoing divorce in modern-day Iran, it still engages with the complexities of Iranian law, and moral questions of guilt and responsibility. But as the title suggests, Roustaee's film is very much about the female experience, and the bond of a mother with her offspring. Arguably it's this that feels radical, a film that gives us the perspective of a modern-day Iranian woman navigating a patriarchal society. And this portrait of an independent woman, living, surviving and eventually grieving in today's Tehran, shows plenty of rebellious spirit. An important social work, this Palm D'Or winner would have been just as deserving of Cannes's top prize.
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Jafar Panahi returns to Iran in triumph after Cannes Palme d'Or win
Iranian film-maker Jafar Panahi was given a hero's welcome on his return to Tehran on Monday after winning the top prize at the Cannes film festival, footage posted on social media showed. After being banned from leaving Iran for years, forced to make films underground and enduring spells in prison, Panahi attended the film festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d'Or for his latest movie It Was Just an Accident. With some supporters concerned that Panahi could face trouble on his return to Iran, he arrived without incident at Tehran's main international airport, named after the founder of the 1979 Islamic revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in the early hours of Monday. He was immediately cheered by supporters waiting in the public area as he descended the escalator from passport control to baggage collection, footage posted by the Dadban legal monitor on social media showed. One person could be heard shouting 'Woman, life, freedom!', the slogan of the 2022-2023 protest movement that shook the Iranian authorities. On exiting, he was greeted by around a dozen supporters who had stayed up to welcome him, according to footage posted on Instagram by the Iranian director Mehdi Naderi and broadcast by the Iran International channel which is based outside Iran. Smiling broadly and waving, he was cheered, applauded, hugged and presented with flowers. 'Fresh blood in the veins of Iranian independent cinema,' wrote Naderi. The warm welcome from fans at the airport contrasted with the lukewarm reaction from Iranian state media and officials to the first time an Iranian film-maker was awarded the Palme d'Or since Taste of Cherry by the late Abbas Kiarostami in 1997. While mentioned by state media such as the IRNA news agency, Panahi's triumph has received only limited coverage inside Iran and has also sparked a diplomatic row with France. French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot called his victory 'a gesture of resistance against the Iranian regime's oppression' in a post on X, prompting Tehran to summon France's chargé d'affaires to protest against the 'insulting' comments. 'I am not an art expert, but we believe that artistic events and art in general should not be exploited to pursue political objectives,' said foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei. The film is politically charged, showing five Iranians confronting a man they believe tortured them in prison, a story inspired by Panahi's own time in detention. After winning the prize, Panahi also made a resounding call for freedom in Iran. 'Let's set aside all problems, all differences. What matters most right now is our country and the freedom of our country.'
