Latest news with #JafarPahani
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Filmmaker Panahi cheered on return to Iran after Cannes triumph
Iranian filmmaker Jafar Pahani was given a hero's welcome on his return to Tehran Monday by supporters 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 French festival in person and sensationally walked away with the Palme d'Or for his latest movie "It Was Just an Accident". With some fans 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. - 'Gesture of resistance' - 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 filmmaker was awarded the Palme d'Or since "The Taste of Cherry" by the late Abbas Kiarostami in 1997. While evoked by state media such as the IRNA news agency, Panahi's triumph has received only thin coverage inside Iran and has also sparked a diplomatic row with France. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel 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 charge d'affaires to protest 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." sjw/as/fg
Indian Express
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Jafar Pahani's It Was Just An Accident lays bare humans' taste for violence, how it hurts themselves
It's late in the night, and a family of three, a husband, wife, and their young daughter, is heading back home. Suddenly, there's a sickening thump, and the car comes to a halt. The man gets out, looks at something on the ground, his face lit by the headlights. We do not see the exact shape or size of the roadkill, but the little girl mentions the death of a dog, the woman justifies it as an act of god, and this little interlude sets the tone for the rest of the film. Jafar Pahani's It Was Just An Accident, his second foray into Cannes competition, is about what happens when an unexpected incident rolls over into wholly unexpected territory. Destiny and chance are play, as is, we discover, righteous vengeance. The man behind the wheel stops off at a garage after the accident. We see a mechanic suddenly start to behave strangely, preventing the wife and daughter, who have stopped to use the restroom, from switching on the main light; he is hiding from something or someone connected to the damaged car. The sense of foreboding that Panahi effortlessly manages to infuse his films with starts building up when the mechanic follows the car, and lies in wait for day to break. At an opportune moment, he grabs the man, bundles him into his van, and takes off into a deserted spot, where he begins digging a grave. And just like that, It Was Just An Accident, becomes something more. The past comes crowding in. The man who's been trussed up and blindfolded under suspicion of having done tremendous damage to a group of people who have been living under a shadow all these years. As it keeps unfolding, the man's sins keep growing, The most hurt of them all is the mechanic, and as he goes about gathering the other victims, all of whom have suffered a great deal at the hands of the man now under their control, buried memories come up. One is a wedding photographer, another is the would-be bride, and a third is a man who doesn't seem to have a profession, but is to be found on the streets, exuding aggression. Pahani's previous film which he filmed in secrecy, No Bears, was a masterpiece, which lays out the depth of his own isolation, portraying two villages, a border, and people living under fear. This one isn't as delicately poised, and in places, the film slackens its grip on us. One of the most moving parts involves the man's pregnant wife and distraught daughter, who are driven to the hospital by this group: they may want revenge, and are enraged enough to want to kill, but when it comes to family, they keep aside their feelings. The difficulty of women being able to speak about male-generated cruelty, even to their closest ones, is striking. The bride-to-be has been brutalised by their is-he-isn't-he captive, but it takes her almost an hour into the film to share the details with the groom. The captive himself, instead of being grateful to his captor for taking his wife to the hospital so that she can be safe while giving birth, yells at him for 'daring to touch his wife', rather than seeing it as a humanist impulse. There's mention of Syria and the on-going war and limbs having been lost during the conflict. There's also Panahi's incarceration as one of the most vocal critics of the Iranian regime. Currently, the on-and-off ban on him has been lifted, but as he says, it is still as difficult for him to make his film, and travel with them. All these threads are woven into the narrative of It Was Just An Accident, and the film lays bare the extent to which ordinary people become slaves to the seductive idea of violence, so much so that they don't see how much it can not only hurt other people, but themselves. There are fewer surprises here, as compared to Panahi's earlier work; some of the humour turns a trifle heavy-handed, but the director does what he does best– capturing the rhythms of life of the ordinary citizens in Iran, as well as those who have been living with trauma.
