It Was Just an Accident Review: Road Rage

Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident captures the anger of a nation under a repressive jackboot with suspense and humanity.

Even if Cannes jury president Juliette Binoche had not been a vocal advocate of Panahi’s for many years, the choice of It Was Just an Accident for the Palme d’Or couldn’t help but be read as political. Panahi’s films are inherently political, even though he does his utmost to fold those instincts into a narrative with an eye to reaching the masses. (When thinking of other ‘political’ Palme wins, the blatancy of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 still lingers in the minds of some, but we’re a long way from that kind of agitprop). Whether or not Binoche was helping a friend in need overlooks one thing: It Was Just an Accident is very good indeed. Is it as good as Trier’s Sentimental Value or Schilinski’s Sound of Falling? Debatable, but outside a festival setting, it stands on its own merits.

Among a surfeit of ironies around It Was Just an Accident, these opening paragraphs border on the kind of metafiction that Panahi often employs in his films, but which is largely absent from his latest. Previous Panahi movies such as Taxi and This Is Not a Film forced the director in front of the camera in defiance of the oppressive government forces that would prefer he stop making films altogether.

It Was Just an Accident was made in secret, lest its criticisms of the Iranian regime land the director and his cast and crew in serious trouble, but these risks are nothing new to Panahi. A one-time assistant to Abbas Kiarostami, Panahi has used the medium of cinema throughout his career to flout Iran’s repressive conventions. He’s rarely been able to leave Iran, but he made it to the Croisette this year, and seeing him walk the red carpet offered a muted hope he might be able to enjoy more filmmaking freedom. Panahi’s films draw attention to Iran’s corruption, but they also bring prestige. It’s a fine line, and it remains to be seen how effectively he can walk it.

Part of the power of It Was Just an Accident lies in its simplicity. A couple and their young child drive down a dark road on the outskirts of Tehran when they hit a dog. They carry on with their damaged car to a garage, but anyone who’s ever seen a horror movie knows this can only end badly. Garage owner Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) thinks that Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), the husband/father of this little clan, is actually the man who interrogated and tortured him in prison years before. Like Vahid’s one-time captor, Eghbal has only one leg, and his prosthetic limb squeaks peculiarly.

One violent outburst later, and Vahid has kidnapped Eghbal, driving along with his prisoner in the back of his van, and toying with whether to kill him or try to establish his identity for sure to assuage any doubts. Among Panahi’s gifts is an ability to switch between high drama and lighter interludes, and it’s particularly invaluable here. Vahid is halfway through burying Eghbal alive when his pleas to live become too much, and the conflicted garage owner has to clarify who he’s burying. It has the makings of farce, but Panahi’s script leans just enough into the absurdity of the moment, making sure the people involved are never the butt of the joke. 

Vahid races around Tehran to find fellow ex-prisoners to confirm his suspicions about Eghbal, but he finds bloodlust has overtaken rationality. Whether asking photographer Shiva (Maryam Afshari) or new bride Golrokh (Hadis Paak Baten), all feel the urge to kill Eghbal first and ask questions later. With the exception of Azizi as Eghbal, all the actors in It Was Just an Accident are non-professional, and all are barely contained bundles of rage. Where Panahi jabbed at aspects of Iranian law and life in previous films, here he unleashes a wild fury in front of and behind the camera.

Vahid brings the ex-prisoners he encounters with him and Eghbal to allow them all some clarity as to the fate of their (possible) former torturer, but as time wears on the van threatens to become a powderkeg with all the hurt and rage simmering inside. When Hamid (Mohammad Ali Eliyas Mehr) comes along, his anger is so strong that it becomes impossible to trust his assertions that they’ve found the right man. Panahi is too clever a filmmaker, and too empathetic an observer, to let anyone be written off until the last possible moment.

It is that empathy, that sliver of humanity, that keeps Panahi and his characters from indulging their worst impulses in It Was Just an Accident. The director can introduce a flourish here and there (Two bookending scenes see characters inspect damage done to their cars in the red glow of brake lights), but he mostly keeps the filmmaking sedate, lest it interrupt the train of thought.

It Was Just an Accident is not without energy, but most of that force lies in the performances and writing. Panahi doesn’t need grand visual statements to make the emotions of the piece known; when Golrokh is confronted with the chance to view her would-be captor one last time, she faints right where she stands in her wedding dress. Moments such as these encapsulate the emotions Panahi and his supporters have had to play down for so long, and now that the world has heard his roar, it’s unlikely he’ll stay quiet.

It Was Just an Accident (Yek Tasadef Sadeh) premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2025, where it won the Palme d’Or. The release date is TBA.