Reviewed on 2nd November at the 2025 Belfast Film Festival
Cast: Ebrahim Azizi, Vahid Mobasheri, Mariam Afshari, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi and Mohamad Ale Elyasmehr.
Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Director: Jafar Panahi
In Irish Cinemas: 5th December 2025
In early 2023, the Iranian authorities abruptly lifted a two-decade ban that had barred director Jafar Panahi from travelling abroad. They sought to halt his filmmaking projects, which he continued in secret despite interrogations, imprisonment, and a hunger strike. After his release, he covertly created It Was Just an Accident, much of it filmed within cramped vehicles out of practical necessity. This year, Panahi finally reached the Cannes Film Festival to unveil the work, where it received the Palme d’Or. Days ago, however, a court sentenced him in absentia to a year in prison and imposed yet another travel ban, accusing him of “propaganda activities” tied to promoting the film overseas. That pattern of arbitrary cruelty, the constant pressure of an authoritarian presence, hangs heavily over It Was Just an Accident.
The film follows mechanic Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), who hears the unmistakable squeak of a prosthetic leg belonging to the man who once tormented him in prison. He trails the figure (played by Ebrahim Azizi), abducts him, drives him deep into the desert, digs a grave-like pit, and tosses the man inside. Yet the cries of innocence rise through the settling soil, stirring Vahid’s conscience. Blindfolded throughout his incarceration, he grapples with a maddening uncertainty: has he seized the right man at all?
Panahi often frames these scenes from afar, placing characters against sweeping, empty lots and desolate streets. The physical space feels vast, but those living inside it appear crushed, bent beneath years of suffering and simmering fury that trembles in their chests and fists.
The film’s emotional force is gut-level, impossible to fully detach from, as if it were the turmoil Panahi himself likely endures. Yet moments unfold with the physical exuberance of a Buster Keaton routine, bodies folding over one another in bursts of chaotic, unexpected comedy.
It Was Just an Accident is, unmistakably, funny, urging audiences to summon the courage to laugh in the face of encroaching darkness. That challenge resonates in a climate where artists, including figures such as Kneecap and Sally Rooney, have confronted rising threats of censorship for outspoken solidarity with Palestine.
Vahid’s search widens as he hunts for others who suffered under the same tormentor, hoping one might confirm the man’s identity. The unconscious captive is wedged into a van’s storage compartment and ferried around the city for a grim, improvised demonstration. Shiva (Mariam Afshari) is pulled away from a wedding photography session, where the bride, Golrokh (Hadis Pakbaten), turns out to be another former detainee. Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), now working in a pharmacy, embodies the way trauma can ricochet through a body without warning, a performance made all the more striking given Elyasmehr’s background as a carpenter. Much of the cast, typical of Panahi’s approach, consists of non-professionals: taxi drivers, karate referees, ordinary citizens.
Questions mount: what should be done with a man who might or might not be responsible for immeasurable cruelty? How does one silence what Shiva describes as the unkillable voice “ringing in my head”? Are these experiences a river that can never be forded again? Fear blankets everything. Silence fills every corner. And yet, in this sharp, surprising take on vengeance, Vahid’s path leads not to violent resolution but to a hospital doorway, carrying a box of pastries meant for the man who once shattered his life.
Overall: 7.5/10
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