Watching “It Was Just an Accident” feels like watching director Jafar Panahi’s tortured yet graceful inner monologue around the merits of forgiveness.
The Iranian filmmaker’s Palme d’Or-winning film, like his other works, was filmed without official permission from the Iranian government—a tactic that enables him to critique the authoritarian regime creatively and without censorship. It hasn’t been without consequences; Panahi was first arrested in 2010, then released, and subsequently placed under house arrest. He was arrested again in 2022 after he inquired about the arrests of fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad.
“It Was Just an Accident” tells a nail-biting and thrilling story in its own right, but also serves as a means for Panahi to process the stories of his own captivity and that of his other inmates, many of whom are still imprisoned. It’s a film that not only condemns the brutality of a state that sanctions violence, but also laments how those who are burdened with enacting its virulent agenda are also victims.
The film opens with a husband (Ebrahim Azizi), wife (Afssaneh Najmabadi), and daughter (Delmaz Najafi), who hit a dog while driving at night. The husband goes to get his car repaired, and a worker, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), gets perturbed upon seeing him and hearing the squeak of his prosthetic leg. Vahid later captures the man, claiming him to be Eghbal, a former intelligence officer who mercilessly tortured Vahid to the point where he can’t walk properly. Eghbal swears he is not the man Vahid is thinking of.
Tortured at the possibility he may have accidentally abducted an innocent man, Vahid recruits several others whom Eghbal also tortured to verify. The crew he’s assembled consists of photographer Shiva (Mariam Afshari) and Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), who were both political prisoners; Goli’s groom, Ali (Madj Panahi); and another former detainee, Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr). The film focuses on their debates and decisions about what to do with Eghbal.
Despite the stress of filming illegally, Panahi found himself at ease throughout the process due to the collaborators around him. “While making this film, I knew who was on my team and who I was working with, and that was able to help me relax,” he shared.
Over Zoom, Panahi, whose words were graciously translated by Sheida Dayani, spoke to RogerEbert.com about screentime as a tool of justice, the gift of working with family, and the significance of the Iranian underground film movement now having a more mainstream presence.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
You haven’t shied away from critiquing the authoritarianism of the Iranian regime in your work. Can you speak to the dynamic between the restrictions you’ve faced throughout your career as a result of this work and the films you’ve made despite those restrictions?
Jafar Panahi: Any film that’s made that doesn’t exactly fit what the government wants will run into the same problems. It’s like that famous saying: “You’re either with us or you’re against us.” There’s nothing in between, so everyone has to find their own way. When I received a heavy prison sentence, I asked myself what I could do. You can find a thousand reasons not to succeed when creating a cinema. Anyone in my circumstances could probably think this would be the ultimate reason not to create.
There was a time when my students would come to me, complain about the circumstances they were facing, and say that they could not make films as a result. But when my team and I made films such as “This Is Not A Film” or “Taxi,” students were not complaining anymore. They realized that there’s nothing that completely closes all the doors to creating. In suppressing authoritarian systems, 50% of the creativity comes from the director’s energy, while the other 50% is dedicated to finding a way to make the film.
What you’re sharing makes me think of how your editor, Amir Etminan, edited the whole film just using Adobe Premiere suite tools on a 2020 MacBook Air with just 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. [From the film’s production notes: Adobe currently blocks Iranian IP addresses, which meant that Etminan was unable to connect to the internet, which is a mainstay of editing with the software.]
(Laughs) That’s because Etminan was lazy … that’s not part of the limitations I’m referring to.
That’s an important distinction to make between limits and laziness.
I have this year’s MacBook and I don’t have any problems. What matters is the work you do, not the equipment you work with.
In your two earlier films, “The White Balloon” and “The Mirror,” and here with “It Was Just An Accident,” you’ve centered child protagonists. Delmaz Najafi is such a powerful force here, acting as a moral foil to some of the more belligerent tendencies of the other characters. How has your process in working with child actors grown from your earlier films till now?
I’m really using the same methods that I used in my previous films in working with Delmaz. The most important thing in casting is choosing the right actors. You have to get to know the child and know how you can bring out certain sensibilities in them. It’s like driving: you learn the basic rules, practice a few times, and then it’s not an issue anymore.
While making this film, I knew who was on my team and who I was working with, which helped me relax throughout the process. You have to give your team members the reasons and the motivation to work, and everyone who worked on “It Was Just an Accident” had those motivations themselves. For example, when you mentioned Amir, he lives in Turkey, but he paid something out of pocket to come all the way to Iran to work on this. That laptop you’re referring to is one he brought with him.
To your point about trusting your collaborators, your nephew, Majid Panahi, had a role in the film. What is it like to invite family members into the fold of your work?
Not only is my nephew here, but my sister-in-law is also in the film. These people joined the project because they wanted to help me. I trust them, and I’m grateful because, more than anything, knowing they were there helped me feel secure and safe, which also made the production feel safe. It was great to work with Majid; he was also in“Taxi,” so it’s a gift to trace his growth.
You’ve previously cited Alfred Hitchcock’s work as a major influence. ome elements of “It Was Just an Accident” evoked his work, from the use of red lighting in the film’s ending scenes, which conjured “Marnie,” or how Eghbal was trapped in a box the whole time, which made me think of“Rope.”
I learned Cinema’s alphabet from Hitchcock when I was a student. Even though films back then were not translated or subtitled, I used to go through all of Hitchcock’s films and watch them one by one, even though I didn’t know English. I didn’t have those films in mind when making this, and I don’t think it was even part of my unconscious process either. Especially after I learned about Italian neorealism, I became a little distant from Hitchcock’s cinema.
What you’re articulating speaks in some ways to the singularity of your cinema. For that final confrontation scene, I read you brought in human rights defender and journalist Mehdi Mamoudian to talk through that moment with the actors, who then proceeded to perform the scene without rehearsal. I feel like for actors, especially Ebrahim Azizi, a willingness to execute a sequence of high intensity without prep speaks to the trust you’re able to cultivate on set.
Throughout the film, except for the opening shot, these characters are thinking and talking about an ostensibly absent person: we don’t see Eghbal, and yet his presence consumes the thoughts of everyone in the van. Even when we see Eghbal in the car shop, those minor scenes are only from the POV of Vahid; Eghbal’s feet and legs get more screentime in those earlier moments. For the majority of the film, Eghbal is in a box and does not appear in the camera.
In order to keep justice, I thought that I had to give him an image in which no other character appears. That’s why I got a medium shot of this character, where the other characters were just in the periphery. That sequence, basked in the car’s red lights where the characters were walking around and coming in and out of frame, made it clear through the blocking that this is Eghbal’s share of the camera, and it is his turn to say what he needs to say. This is the logic behind the mise-en-scène.
I was watching the film the other day, and when I got to this sequence, I realized Azizi played this role extremely well. It is challenging for an actor to keep going for 13 minutes with eyes and hands tied and still bring out every moment correctly. I can’t really think of much in cinema to compare his acting to.
I hope actors think about this sequence and celebrate his precision. There’s nothing extra; no extra movements, no extra frames … even his moments of silence are in precisely the right places, as is his being subdued and coming down from power. His laughter, anger, and show of power are all perfectly calibrated. How is it possible for an actor to bring all of this together? I want someone to look closely into this and tell me if there is anything wrong with his performance (Laughs). The entire film is now put in this one frame because Azizi brought everything to that moment. I hope someone writes about this scene and tries to amplify this type of acting.
The characters here want Peg Leg to explicitly name the pain he’s caused them. There’s a unique anguish that comes when the wrongdoer doesn’t acknowledge their transgression. How has working on this film–or even the act of cinema itself–helped you, if at all, reconcile this idea that your oppressor may never own up to what they’ve done wrong?
Something I’m grappling with is that the treatment I received in prison was different than anyone else’s because I was a known filmmaker. If I didn’t eat for two days, the entire world would find out. Many people in prison would go on hunger strikes for two weeks, three weeks, or a month, and no one outside would hear about it. Cinema bears witness to these stories and ensures they are not forgotten.
It was humorous and heartfelt to witness all these disparate characters become a makeshift family. I think of fellow Iranian underground filmmakers, from Mohammad Rasoulof to Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, who have been friends, collaborators, and fellow inmates. Can you speak more about how creating this community of other filmmakers has been a source of encouragement and inspiration?
There was a time when independent films were ignored because mainstream cinema was so powerful that films like ours were not being seen. Thankfully, over the years, we have worked so much that we’re now at a point where the best films of Iranian cinema are made independently. This has created a path for the younger generation to make films, meaning the labor we all spent on finding solutions and paths for people has come to fruition.
Even now, in Iran, you can’t ignore the films from the underground. Even when Iran wanted to select a film for the Oscars, they had to choose an independent film. They’re choosing films that three years ago, they would have been banned from screening and playing, and now, out of force, they have gone to that film to introduce it as their selection for the Oscars.
But the cost is heavy. I think of Maryam Moghaddam and Behtash Sanaeeha, who made “My Favorite Cake” … they are banned from leaving Iran. It’s encouraging to see this type of cinema showing itself as a heavyweight, but I never forget all the people who paid the price for it.
“It Was Just an Accident” opens in New York on Oct. 15, then expands to LA on Oct. 17, and then expands nationwide.