Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been making movies for years under the restrictive regime that has put him in prison and resulted in numerous arrests, travel bans, filmmaking bans, and more injustices. As recently as 2022, the 65-year-old director was imprisoned for seven months before he went on a hunger strike, which resulted in his release two days later. During all this, Panahi has continued to make films, sometimes smuggling them out of Iran, other times watching from prison as they are released. Now, he has returned to Cannes in person for the first time since 2003 and 30 years after he won the Camera d’Or for The White Balloon, his debut feature.

Panahi has always used his films to criticize the policies and human rights abuses of the Islamic Republic, making his films in secret and without permits. His most recent, It Was Just An Accident, was made under similar circumstances, but this time, Panahi was able to present the film himself. Inspired by his time in prison, It Was Just An Accident, which debuted in Competition at Cannes and just won the Palme d’Or, is an incendiary revenge thriller with a strikingly poignant moral quandary at the center. Even without the added context of Panahi’s lauded career, the film is effective in its startling and understated immediacy, but considering the place within Panahi from which this is coming makes it all the more a bold statement from the director.

A Split-Second Decision Leads To A Startling Moral Tale In It Was Just An Accident

The film begins with a family of three traveling home one evening when Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) hits a dog, damaging the car and forcing him to pull over and ask for help at a local shop. He walks into the garage, his leg creaking due to the prosthetic he wears from an unmentioned incident. The sound immediately triggers garage owner Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who stalks Eghbal after he leaves, proceeding to kidnap him and drive him out to the desert, before digging a hole deep enough to bury him in.

We come to find out that, due to the sound his false leg makes, Vahid believes Eghbal is the man who tortured him while imprisoned. He’s not entirely sure, though - he was blindfolded the whole time and when Eghbal shows him his scars from the injury that left him without a leg, it’s unclear if the timeline matches up. As doubt begins to creep in, and we are forced to question whether Vahid is making decisions based on a hunch rather than any confirmed fact, he decides not to bury Eghbal, reaching out to a fellow prisoner to help him confirm the identity of the man he has stuffed into a box in the back of his van.

From there, things spiral out of control, as other victims of Eghbal’s alleged violence are roped into Vahid’s kidnapping plot and they themselves debate his identity and whether killing Eghbal will even heal any of the wounds inflicted by him and the regime. The man is insistent that he is not these people’s torturer but, for much of the film, we are just as in the dark as Vahid and the others, including wedding photographer Shiva, the bride-to-be, her groom, and another man who is hellbent on killing Eghbal regardless of the doubt that begins to spread through the group like a disease.

Every tiny act of resistance is just as important as a grander one [and] it’s through all of this that Panahi finds such poignant emotion...

It’s as if, in real time, Panahi is working through his own thoughts about what he would do if he were to face his tormentors and have this kind of power over them, giving voice to the various perspectives at play. Is revenge really the answer? Will this violent act really heal the trauma inflicted by the man with the prosthetic leg? And what to make of the bride and groom, on the cusp of one of the happiest moments of their lives and thrown back into the depths of their worst experience.

Panahi keeps things tight, and we follow this group as they drive around, debating what to do. The van itself serves as a primary location, claustrophobic and seething with the anger, resentment, and fear of what such an act could cost them now that they have all begun to heal in their own ways. Using this brilliantly crafted story, Panahi asks many important questions about the nature of revenge, violence, oppressive regimes, and more. It’s a slick vehicle - sleeker than Vahid’s van - but not without its messiness.

Releasing this film, though, is a continued act of resistance by Panahi, and he gives a voice to people, both in Iran and under other oppressive governments, who have thought about all the ways they themselves would take revenge against the people who have harmed them. Even in subtle ways, It Was Just An Accident is revolutionary, from the circumstances under which Panahi filmed the movie, to having actresses on screen without hijabs, which are mandatory by law in Iran.

At one point, a character claims that the group is not filled with killers - “We are not like them,” she says. But those small differences don’t matter in a cycle of violence like one created by the lives they are forced to lead, whether that’s by abiding by the laws made by the government or flouting them in their daily lives. Every tiny act of resistance is just as important as a grander one. It’s through all of this that Panahi finds such poignant emotion, wrapped up in a thriller that is as thought-provoking as it is chilling. It’s a stunning achievement from the director, one that has sat with me since I saw it, growing in its effectiveness. Like the doubt that creeps in on the group of revenge-seekers, It Was Just An Accident seeps in slowly before gripping you and taking you along for its enthralling ride.

It Was Just An Accident premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival where it won the Palme d'Or. NEON will distribute the film in North America.