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CairoScene
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
Cannes Review: ‘It Was Just An Accident' Examines Torture
Cannes Review: 'It Was Just An Accident' Examines Torture Jafar Panahi is one of Iran's most celebrated and defiant filmmakers. He rose to international prominence with his debut feature The White Balloon, which won the Caméra d'Or at Cannes in 1995. From the beginning, his films stood out for their deep empathy for the struggles of ordinary Iranians. Works like The Circle, Offside, and Taxi pushed the boundaries of Iranian cinema with their sharp social commentary. He often likes to blend fiction with a documentary-style of storytelling. But Panahi's refusal to conform to state expectations has come at a heavy cost. In 2010, after years of government pressure, he was arrested and handed a six-year prison sentence along with a 20-year ban on filmmaking, interviews, and travel. He was accused of spreading propaganda against the regime. Remarkably, he continued making films in secret and smuggled them out of the country to major festivals. For example, This Is Not a Film (2011) was shot while under house arrest and became a symbol of artistic resistance. His latest film, It Was Just An Accident, has perhaps the most fascinating premise of Jafar Panahi's career. What if, on a random ordinary day, you suddenly come face-to-face with the man who tortured you? The man who drove your fiancé to commit suicide? What if he denies who he is? Worse yet. What if he's now a seemingly gentle man with a family of his own? Panahi spins this ethical dilemma into a gripping psychological thriller that's as morally complex as it is emotionally shattering. Yet, even with such a harrowing premise, It Was Just An Accident is surprisingly light-hearted. Panahi infuses the film with deadpan humour that recalls the quirky charm of Little Miss Sunshine. A significant portion of the film takes place in a run-down minibus. More and more people join the ride. We gradually learn that they too were tortured by the same man. To reveal anything more would ruin the film for you. But I will say this, It Was Just An Accident contains perhaps the most perfect ending of any film I've seen this year. The film makes us question whether we are to blame the individual torturer, or if he is merely a component in a much larger and more insidious machine. Panahi deliberately invited viewers to reflect on Hannah Arendt's concept of the 'banality of evil'. This notion suggests that some of the most horrific acts in history have not been committed by monsters. Rather, they were being committed by ordinary individuals who were simply obeying orders and conforming to oppressive systems. Panahi frames the torturer as a husband, a father, and a man performing the mundane rituals of daily life. Can someone be both a loving parent and a former agent of terror? Can humanity and monstrosity co-exist in the same person? The film avoids offering easy answers. Instead, it invites a kind of active spectatorship where audiences must reckon with the discomfort of moral ambiguity. It's one of the best films of the year.
The Hindu
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Hindu
Jafar Panahi wins Cannes 2025 Palme d'Or for secret film shot under Iran's film ban
Published : May 26, 2025 12:39 IST - 7 MINS READ Thirty years ago, at the Cannes Film Festival in 1995, the Caméra d'Or award for the best debut feature was awarded to a film called The White Balloon, a tender portrayal of childhood in a harsh adult world. Told through the eyes of a young girl hoping to buy a goldfish and seeking help from adult strangers who ignore her, the film was compassionate in its portrayal of the gradual slipping away of hope and innocence. The winner, Jafar Panahi, a young Iranian director with a perpetual cheeky grin on his face, accepted the award at a time when dissent in Iranian cinema was not widespread. Panahi went on to make several acclaimed films after The White Balloon, including The Mirror, The Circle, Crimson Gold, and Offside, but it did not take him long to get in the crosshairs of the Iranian regime. When he took an active role in a protest movement along the likes of the Arab Spring, called Iranian Green Movement, the regime took notice and put him under a 20-year ban from making movies or travelling outside the country. Also Read | Tell all the truth but tell it slant If the world had not paid attention to the Iranian auteur with steely moral integrity to rage against the mullah machine until then, it took notice when an empty chair represented Panahi, who was part of the jury in the Berlin Film Festival of 2011, because the Iranian government had banned him from attending it. World cinema's leading voice of dissent was born. It was Just an Accident: A thriller caper In what is certainly a full-circle moment in his life, Panahi travelled to Cannes this year, screened his film It was Just an Accident in the competition section, and won the most prestigious Palme d'Or award in the recently concluded 78th Cannes Film Festival. The dissident filmmaker's visit to Cannes was kept under wraps and revealed only after he landed at the Nice airport, days prior to the premiere of his film. Banned from filmmaking and imprisoned multiple times, Panahi went on making films and sending them to festivals, the copies hidden and smuggled out of the country in creative ways. It was Just an Accident is a thriller caper in which an ex-prison guard, a regime enforcer, is kidnapped by a motley crew of people whose lives have been upturned by his actions—an arrest for not wearing a headscarf, imprisonment for arbitrary reasons, and torture in prison after being arrested in protests. In hauntingly unspooling visuals, Panahi's subjects weave in and out of indecision, betraying their own morality while they decide how to punish the man. The film is a stark departure from Panahi's previous films—there is no mix of fiction and non-fiction like in his recent works, No Bears or Taxi Tehran; there is no quiet meditation. It is a direct confrontation with the fact of living in a system that produces broken lives and forces people into rancorous retribution. Like every film since Panahi's initial arrest in 2009, this one too was shot secretly without permission from the authorities. How the film was sent to the festival is still unclear, but the regime seems to have allowed him to travel outside the country. 'The regime sometimes imprisons opponents it can't punish severely but it also can't keep them in prison forever,' said Ardeshir Tayebi, an Iranian journalist who lives in exile in Germany. He added that in order to exercise strict control on its film industry, the regime dictates what gets made and served to people, by harassing some filmmakers while supporting others. Hijab controversy Iranian cinema is controlled by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The Iranian body called Owj Arts and Media Organization is a propaganda arm of the regime. The films they produce are not necessarily about Islam or on religious themes, and some of them even have a very modern outlook. For example, Saeed Roustayi, whose film Woman and Child was also in the competition section in Cannes this year, had his film produced by this very organisation. Even though it appears to portray the struggles of women in a patriarchal society with the judiciary heavily skewed against them, women wear hijab indoors, even in a women-only household, in the film. This has not gone unnoticed in Iranian circles. Yalda Moaiery, a well-known Iranian photojournalist, wrote on X: 'Saeed Roustayi made a film adhering to the mandatory hijab rules, and the cast even appeared on the red carpet wearing something resembling the hijab! Then, he dedicated the film to filmmakers who have been banned from working due to protesting compulsory hijab! Isn't that a bit cunning, Mr. Roustayi?!' 'In Panahi's films, the camera never enters any homes. Even if it follows a character to their doorstep, it stays outside and doesn't go in. That's because Panahi refuses to show women wearing hijab inside their own homes. Wearing hijab on the streets of Iran is normal, but no Muslim woman wears it at home. However, the regime forces filmmakers to depict women wearing hijab indoors as well,' said Tayebi. Widespread appeal While Panahi's legacy is revered in the West, in his own country, his movies have hardly been released. Films by Panahi and the recently exiled Mohammad Rasoulof are no longer as widely seen inside Iran as they used to be. They deal with serious social issues and do not appeal to a mainstream audience because they are not meant to entertain. Despite all this, people in Iran still find ways to access these films. 'When I was a teenager, there were street vendors who used to sell the latest international films on DVD. These films were all illegal and sold without government permission. Among their collections, you found Panahi's movies. I remember watching The Circle and Offside when I was just a teenager, and they left a deep impression on me. I think Panahi is truly a great filmmaker and storyteller who, because of his artistic integrity, naturally ended up opposing censorship and dictatorship,' said Tayebi. Panahi's appeal is widespread. Prantik Basu, a short filmmaker who is currently working on his debut feature titled Dengue, said he turns to Panahi's work whenever he feels caught in a creative gridlock. 'Filmmaking isn't easy, even when one has all the resources. Panahi's work reminds me why we keep at it: because cinema is not only an expression, it's also a need. I especially like Offside, the first Panahi film I saw and often revisit, for the sheer joy, hope and perseverance.' At It was Just an Accident's premiere, Panahi said amidst the roar of the standing ovation, 'The day I was released from prison, as I emerged and looked behind me at the tall walls, I didn't know how to feel…was I relieved or anxious? My dear friends still remained imprisoned behind those walls. I asked myself, 'What am I going to do outside?'' Panahi has been giving interviews saying that he has every plan to return to his homeland even though the scrutiny and oppression, despite (or because of) his Palme d'Or win, is only bound to intensify. Also Read | Cinema cannot change the world: Goutam Ghose 'Whether I am banned or not, I still do not wish to make the kind of films they want me to make. I can't follow the formal or legal way of filmmaking. I want to make the films I feel are necessary to make. It always remains underground or parallel to the official system,' he told Screen magazine. Unlike fellow filmmaker Mohammad Rasoulof, who sought asylum in Germany last year, Panahi has been clear about his intentions to go back after his travels. 'I believe part of the regime's strategy is to pressure artists, activists, critics, and journalists to force them to leave the country. They probably think that if they separate an artist from the people they grew up with and create for, that artist will lose their impact, and it's probably true. That's why I think Panahi wants to return,' Tayebi says. Based on social media reports, Panahi has already landed in Tehran. The regime has allowed him in, but his future as a filmmaker who's able to realise his projects freely remains unclear. Upon winning the Palme d'Or, Panahi said touchingly, 'I hope the moment we all long for and fight for reaches us soon, and we are no longer obligated to go underground to make our films.' Prathap Nair is a freelance culture journalist based in Düsseldorf, Germany.
Express Tribune
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Express Tribune
From prison cell to Cannes
Jafar Panahi never set out to be a political filmmaker. "In my definition, a political filmmaker defends an ideology where the good follow it and the bad oppose it," the Iranian director says. "In my films, even those who behave badly are shaped by the system, not personal choice," he tells DW. But for more than a decade, Panahi has had little choice. Following his support for the opposition Green Movement protests, the director of The White Balloon and The Circle, was handed a 20-year ban on filmmaking and international travel in 2010. That didn't stop him. Over the years, he found new ways to shoot, edit, and smuggle out his films — from turning his living room into a film set (This Is Not a Film) to using a car as a mobile studio (in Taxi, which won the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlinale). Last week, Panahi stepped back into the spotlight — not through smuggled footage or video calls, but in person. For the first time in over two decades, the now 64-year-old filmmaker returned to the Cannes Film Festival to present his latest feature, It Was Just an Accident, premiering in competition to an emotional 8-minute standing ovation. Prison to the Palais The road to Cannes has been anything but smooth. Panahi was arrested again in July 2022 and detained in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. After almost seven months and a hunger strike, he was released in February 2023. In a stunning legal victory, Iran's Supreme Court overturned his original 2010 sentence. Panahi was legally free, but artistically still bound by a system he refuses to submit to. "To make a film in the official way in Iran, you have to submit your script to the Islamic Guidance Ministry for approval," he tells DW. "This is something I cannot do. I made another clandestine film. Again." That film, It Was Just An Accident, may be Panahi's most direct confrontation yet with state violence and repression. Shot in secret and featuring unveiled female characters in defiance of Iran's hijab law, the film tells the story of a group of ex-prisoners who believe they've found the man who tortured them — and must decide whether to exact revenge. The taut, 24-hour drama unfolds like a psychological thriller. Stylistically, It Was Just An Accident is a sharp break from the more contained, and largely self-reflexive works Panahi made while under his official state ban, but the plot remains strongly autobiographical. Thriller that cuts deep The film opens with a banal tragedy — a man accidentally kills a dog with his car - and spirals into a slow-burning reckoning with state-sanctioned cruelty. Vahid (Valid Mobasseri), a mechanic who is asked to repair the damaged car, thinks he recognises the owner as Eghbal, aka Peg-Leg, his former torturer. He kidnaps him, planning to bury him alive in the desert. But he can't be sure he's got the right man, because he was blindfolded during his internment. "They kept us blindfolded, during interrogation or when we left our cells," Panahi recalls of his time in prison. "Only in the toilet could you remove the blindfold." Seeking reassurance, the mechanic reaches out to fellow prisoners for confirmation. Soon Vahid's van is packed with victims seeking revenge on the man who abused them for nothing more than voicing opposition to the authorities. There's a bride (Hadis Pakbaten) who abandons her wedding, together with her wedding photographer and former inmate Shiva (Maryam Afshari), to go after the man who raped and tortured her. There's Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a man so traumatised and so furious by his experience he doesn't care if the man they've caught is the right guy; he just wants vengeance. "Even dead, they're a scourge on humanity," he says of all the intelligence officers serving under the regime. As the group debates vengeance vs non-violence, alongside brutal descriptions of the beatings and torture they endured, Panahi inserts sly moments of humour and touches of the absurd. The hostage-takers cross paths with Eghbal's family, including his heavily pregnant wife, and suddenly find themselves rushing her to the hospital to give birth. Afterwards, as is tradition in Iran, Vahid heads to a bakery to buy everyone pastries. "All these characters that you see in this film were inspired by conversations that I had in prison, by stories people told me about the violence and the brutality of the Iranian government, violence that has been ongoing for more than four decades now," says Panahi. "In a way, I'm not the one who made this film. It's the Islamic Republic that made this film, because they put me in prison. Maybe if they want to stop us being so subversive, they should stop putting us in jail." No escape, no exile Despite a career defined by resistance, Panahi insists he's simply doing the only thing he knows how. "During my 20-year ban, even my closest friends had given up hope that I would ever make films again," he said at the Cannes press conference for It Was Just An Accident. "But people who know me know I can't change a lightbulb. I don't know how to do anything except make films". While many Iranian filmmakers have fled into exile - including Panahi's close friend Mohammad Rasoulof, director of the Oscar-nominated The Seed of the Sacred Fig, who now lives in Berlin — Panahi says he has no plans to join them. "I'm completely incapable of adjusting to another society," he says. "I had to be in Paris for three and a half months for post-production, and I thought I was going to die." In Iran, he explained, filmmaking is a communal act of improvisation and trust. "At 2AM I can call a colleague and say: 'That shot should be longer.' And he'll come join me and we'll work all night. In Europe, you can't work like this. I don't belong." So, even after his Cannes triumph, Panahi will return home. "As soon as I finish my work here, I will go back to Iran the next day. And I will ask myself: What's my next film going to be?"
France 24
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- France 24
Jafar Panahi: Iran's dissident director who lives for cinema
The 64-year-old is a symbol of artistic defiance who repeatedly challenges his country's strict censorship laws to produce movies about Iran's social and cultural struggles. His latest production "It Was Just an Accident" tells the story of five formerly imprisoned Iranians who are confronted with a man they believe to have been their torturer in jail. Shot in secret, it is partly inspired by Panahi's own experiences behind bars following his most recent near seven-month prison term in 2022-2023 which ended with a hunger strike. "I'm alive as long as I'm making films. If I'm not making films, then what happens to me no longer matters," he told AFP in an interview last week. He has won a host of prizes at European film festivals and showcased his debut film "The White Balloon" in Cannes in 1995 which won an award for best first feature. Saturday's win is his highest honour yet and was presented to him in person on his first visit to Cannes in 15 years. - 20-year ban - In 2010, Panahi was banned from making movies and leaving the country after supporting mass anti-government protests a year earlier and making a series of films that critiqued the state of modern Iran. Convicted of "propaganda against the system", he was sentenced to six years in jail but served only two months behind bars before being released on bail. In the years that followed, Iranian authorities appeared content to turn a blind eye to his failure to toe the line, as long as his films did not appear overtly political. He continued to make films, however, and his efforts to smuggle them out to foreign distributors and film festivals became the stuff of legend. A year after being handed a 20-year ban on filmmaking he dispatched a documentary with the cheeky title "This is Not a Film" to the Cannes Festival on a flash drive stashed in a cake. His 2015 movie "Taxi" featured him acting as a taxi driver and was shot entirely in a car, allowing him to avoid the ever-watchful eyes of Iranian police while filming. His conversations with a cross-section of Iranians that come aboard -- a lawyer barred from practising her trade, a badly-injured man who is making his will on the backseat -- provided rich insights into everyday life in the Islamic republic. Jail material The tolerance of Panahi's work ended in July 2022 when he was re-arrested in connection with protests by a group of filmmakers. He was ordered to serve out the sentence that had been hanging over him since 2010 in Tehran's notorious Evin prison, but was released nearly seven months later. He said he had used some of his conversations with fellow inmates as inspiration for the script of "It Was Just an Accident", which he wrote himself. "When you put (an artist) in prison, you're handing them an opportunity, giving them material, ideas, opening up a whole new world," he said in Cannes. The core of the allegorical film examines the moral dilemma faced by people if they are given opportunity to take revenge on their oppressors. "We chose a range of characters, from violent to non-violent, from a simple man to someone completely detached from such concerns," he told AFP. "Through their actions and reactions, we reach -- or perhaps fail to reach -- a conclusion about what the right path might be." 'Pressure' A child of the Tehran slums, Panahi is a leading exponent of Iranian New Wave cinema, alongside Abbas Kiarostami, whom he served as an assistant early in his career. In keeping with the movement, his films focus on the social realities of his homeland and give pride of place to non-professional actors. After "The White Balloon", he was given the second-place jury prize in Cannes in 2003 for "Blood and Gold" and best screenplay in 2018 for his roadmovie "3 Faces". He said he planned to return to Iran after this year's festival despite the risks for him. He revealed on Wednesday that he and his cast had faced "pressure" since "It Was Just an Accident" was selected at Cannes, with several team members called in for questioning. Panahi has a film-making son who is following in his foot steps. Panah Panahi presented his first feature, "Hit the Road", in 2021 in a section for young directors. burs-adp/fg/phz © 2025 AFP
Hindustan Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hindustan Times
Cannes Film Festival: Jafar Panahi wins Palme d'Or for It Was Just an Accident, Sentimental Value gets Grand Prix
The Cannes Film Festival handed over the official awards during the closing ceremony of the 78th edition on the last day. The president of the main jury Juliette Binoche announced that the top prize of the festival went to It Was Just an Accident, directed by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi. (Also read: Alia Bhatt stuns in a sultry saree for the closing ceremony of Cannes Film Festival) Jafar Panahi returned to Cannes after a 14-year travel ban by the Iranian government with this new feature film. He had first come to Cannes in 1995 with The White Balloon, which won the Camera d'Or. In the next few years, he premiered Crimson Gold which won the Jury Award in 2003, This is Not a Film in 2011, and 3 Faces in 2018 which won Best Screenplay. Panahi also joined the elite list of filmmakers to have won the top prize in three of the prestigious film festivals in the world: Venice, Cannes and Berlin. He now joins the club of Henri-Georges Clouzot, Robert Altman and Michelangelo Antinioni, with the Palme win. Panahi won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival for The Circle (2000) and the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival for Offside (2006). Joachim Trier's Sentimental Value, which wowed Cannes and received a whooping 19-minute standing ovation, took home the second big award of the night- the Grand Prix. The acting awards went to Nadia Melliti for The Little Sister and Wagner Moura for The Secret Agent. Brazilian filmmaker Kleber Mendonça Filho won best director for the film. Meanwhile, Cannes veterans Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne won Best Screenplay for Young Mothers. The Jury Prize was a tie, and went to Olivier Laxe for Sirat and Mascha Schilinski's The Sound of Falling. A special jury prize was given to Bi Gan for Resurrection. This year Indian filmmaker Payal Kapadia was part of the main competition jury. Her 2024 film All We Imagine As Light took home the Grand Prix last year.
