Film Review: It Was Just An Accident

It Was Just An Accident
Director: Jafar Panahi
Jafar Panahi Film Productions, Les Films Pelléas, Bidibul Productions, Pio & Co, ARTE France Cinéma
In Theaters: 10.15.2025

Morality and trauma seem to go together like a parent and a child; not only are both inevitably connected, but it’s often hard to tell which one is doing more to shape the other. It Was Just An Accident, the latest film from internationally celebrated filmmaker Jafar Panahi, and the winner of the Palm d’Or at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, is a powerful story that poses the question of whether we can fully satisfy or separate ourselves from one without jeopardizing the other.

On a desolate highway outside Tehran, an unnamed man (Ebrahim Azizi, U-Turn, Ropewalker Memories) drives with his wife and daughter when he accidentally runs over a dog, damaging his car. After dropping his family off at home, he heads to a nearby nearby garage, where Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri, No End, Projectionist), an Azerbaijani mechanic, catches the man’s voice and gait, noticing the squeaking sound of his prosthetic leg — he’s sure it’s Pegleg Eghbal, the notorious prison interrogator who mercilessly tortured him and other blindfolded political prisoners. The next day, haunted and furious, Vahid kidnaps the man and drags him into the desert to uncover the truth. Seeking confirmation, he enlists a few of his fellow survivors: Shiva (Mariam Afshari), a war-scarred photographer; Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a volatile former inmate who wants to jump straight to killing the man and Golrokh (Hadis Pakbaten) and Ali (Majid Panahi, Taxi), a young couple preparing for their wedding day. Each recognizes fragments — his smell, his limp, his tone — but no one is certain, since their memories come from behind blindfolds and suppressed pain. As they argue, the man’s phone rings: his wife is in labor, his daughter terrified. With dawn approaching and doubt creeping in, vengeance and justice blur, as the survivors must decide what kind of reckoning they truly want.

It Was Just An Accident is a riveting film — a taut and suspenseful piece of neo realist storytelling rooted in complex questions. It’s easy enough for westerners who have faced anything comparable to what these characters endured to sit back from the comfort of luxury seating and make emphatic statements about what we would or wouldn’t do in such a situation, yet we don’t have look far to seeing a both rational behavior and the distinctions between right and wrong abandoned for far less, or the possibility of a future where our political convictions can land us in prison. The burning question that permeates in It Was Just An Accident is whether this man being held captive in the van is in fact Eghbal, or an innocent man with a prosthetic limb and an eerily similar voice. Is the voice even that similar, or do they just want it to be? And if it is Eghbal, is this a long prayed opportunity to find justice and a sense of closure that a broken system can never give them, or a nightmare scenario where they descend into a self-made hell where they are devils? Writer-director Panahi had a lot to to draw on, having been interrogated and sentenced to six years in prison in Iran for “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic” (making movies with messages that the government didn’t like), a 20-year ban from writing, directing and producing films, and leaving Iran. Despite the ban, he has kept making important films in his home country, and was smuggled out of Iran to attend the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.

The cast is mostly made up of dedicated amateurs, yet they bring a stark sense of reality and understanding to the film. Mobasseri is superb and deeply moving as Vahid, the man whose swift reaction to the promise of having found his tormentor set these events in motion, yet he’s ultimately the same man whose nagging conscience keeps everyone else in check. It’s a beautifully low key performance that is nicely supported by Afshari’s at times icy and at times fiery turn as Shiva, the voice of reason who at times has to work just as hard to keep herself under control as the others. Perhaps the most penetrating and haunting performance comes from Azizi (the lone experienced film actor in the main cast) as the group’s helpless captive who may well be their sadistic captor — we’re just as unsure as Vahid, because Azizi’s unassuming performance creates a vivid picture of a man made of flesh and blood, but his controlled demeanor makes him nearly impossible to read. If this were an even remotely recognized American actor, he’d be the clear frontrunner for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

It Was Just An Accident (Yek tasadof-e sadeh in Persian, or Un Simple Accident in French) is a magnificent, triumphant and deeply-affecting film that resonates now more than ever, and one that American audiences need to prioritize as an absolutely essential viewing experience. A story of humanity at its least and most human, this profound work of art stands one of the most important — as well as one of the most involving — works to grace the silver screen in years. —Patrick Gibbs

Read more film reviews from Patrick Gibbs:
Film Review: Good Fortune
Film Review: After The Hunt