This review examines Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or–winning film It Was Just an Accident, a darkly comic moral thriller that follows survivors of torture as they stumble into a chance encounter that may—or may not—place their former tormentor within reach. When the creak of a prosthetic leg instantly returns one victim to the moment of blindfolded abuse, certainty collides with doubt: is this truly the man, or is memory misfiring? Panahi transforms this question into an absurd, tightly wound road narrative suspended between revenge and mercy—reminding us that no matter how carefully torturers conceal themselves, memory refuses erasure, and the reckoning, sooner or later, arrives.
The creak of a prosthetic leg is enough to summon back, in an instant, the memory of torture endured years ago with eyes blindfolded. Vahid is certain the man standing before him is his torturer. But what if he is wrong?
Jafar Panahi’s Palme d’Or–winning masterpiece follows an absurd yet harrowing journey in which victims, caught between revenge and mercy, struggle to recognize the face of evil. Blending black comedy with sustained tension, the film delivers a stark reminder: no matter how carefully torturers conceal themselves, memory never forgets them. The day of reckoning arrives—sooner or later.
Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s latest film, “It Was Just an Accident” (Yek Tasadof-e Sade), opens with a striking irony. A pregnant woman, her husband with a prosthetic leg, and their daughter dancing to music in the back seat drive along a winding dirt road at night when they hit a dog. Despite seeing pain on her daughter’s face, the mother remains calm: “It was just an accident,” she says. Her justification is telling—God willed it—and besides, why are there no streetlights anyway?
This seemingly banal excuse becomes a recurring refrain throughout the film, one that never remains innocent. Because this small accident ignites a far greater reckoning.
When the car breaks down, the family is stranded in front of a dilapidated workshop. By sheer coincidence, the worker there—Vahid—hears the creaking of the prosthetic leg before he sees the driver. That sound catapults him into the past. Vahid becomes convinced that this man is İkbal, a former Iranian intelligence officer who tortured him years earlier while he was blindfolded—known only as “the Limping One.”
Here the film’s central ambiguity begins: Is this really him? Or is Vahid’s memory betraying him?
Panahi refuses to answer too quickly. Though subtle clues appear early—the daughter’s remark that no one can come to the house, the driver’s face bathed in deep red light reminiscent of Hitchcock’s Marnie—ambiguity itself becomes a tool of suspense. Acting on conviction, Vahid kidnaps the man in broad daylight. Preparing to kill him, he digs a grave—only to be stopped by the captive’s desperate claim: “I’m not that man. You’ve taken the wrong person.”
The man offers proof. He insists the injuries on his leg are recent and urges Vahid to inspect them. Doubt creeps in. What if he is about to kill an innocent man?
This hesitation drives Vahid to seek out other former political prisoners: Shiva, now a wedding photographer, and—by coincidence—the bride she is photographing, Goli.
From this point onward, the film transforms into an absurd road movie. Panahi assembles a vivid ensemble: worker, bride and groom, photographer—all packed into a minibus, heading toward an uncertain destination with a man hidden in a toolbox. Tension and dark humor escalate together. Because all of them once knew “the Limping One” only while blindfolded, they attempt to identify him through sensory memory: Vahid by sound, Shiva by smell, Hamid by touching the scars on his leg.
This reliance on sensory memory powerfully illustrates how trauma imprints itself on both body and mind—and how it remains painfully vivid even decades later.
Unexpected disruptions follow. The minibus breaks down. A birth takes place. Bribes are paid. Disputes unfold with comic undertones. Amir Etminan’s masterful panning shots capture these moments as simultaneously chaotic, tense, and darkly humorous. Structured as a continuous 24-hour narrative, the film slowly but decisively becomes a searing indictment of abused power and its long-term consequences.
While watching, another film came to mind.
To fully grasp It Was Just an Accident, it is illuminating to compare it with Jon Stewart’s 2014 film “Rosewater.”
Both films deal with the torture and interrogation of political prisoners in Iran—but from mirrored perspectives. Rosewater recounts the true story of journalist Maziar Bahari, imprisoned for 118 days in Evin Prison in 2009: an innocent man confronting state terror. Stewart’s film looks at imprisonment from the inside. Blindfolded, Bahari identifies his interrogator solely by the scent of rosewater.
This sensory recognition parallels Panahi’s film, where perpetrators are identified through sound, smell, and touch. Yet the timelines diverge. Rosewater focuses on trauma as it unfolds and immediately afterward; It Was Just an Accident confronts the reckoning years later. Stewart exposes how innocence is crushed; Panahi explores how victims are trapped between revenge and mercy.
Their tonal differences are equally significant. Stewart’s trademark humor seeps into Rosewater, drawing criticism from some who felt it softened Bahari’s ordeal. Yet the humor also underscores the Kafkaesque relationship between Bahari and his interrogator—two frightened, flawed men locked in a perverse intimacy.
Panahi’s black humor serves another function. The absurd situations inside the minibus—a birth, bribery, petty disputes—do not dilute the message; they sharpen it.
While Stewart avoids overt political condemnation in favor of a universal message of freedom, Panahi directly indicts the Iranian regime—and does so far more confrontationally. The difference lies partly in personal experience: Stewart may have made Rosewater with a sense of guilt, as his Daily Show interview contributed to Bahari’s arrest. Panahi, by contrast, is himself a tortured filmmaker. Every character in the film can be read as a version of Panahi.
Thus the film’s ethical question—How do you remain human when your humanity has been stripped from you? How do you resist becoming like your oppressors when all other tools are exhausted?—is ultimately the director questioning himself.
Panahi’s life cannot be separated from his films. In 2010 he was imprisoned for two months, mistreated by guards, and his family was threatened. Upon release, he was sentenced to 20 years of house arrest, banned from filmmaking and from leaving Iran—restrictions he continues to defy.
It Was Just an Accident was shot clandestinely, without official permission. In this light, every character—the tortured prisoners, the revenge-seeking victims, the silent bystanders—can be seen as facets of Panahi himself.
Hamid’s monologue in the desert is particularly striking. He accuses the others of neutrality, erasure, passivity. Each character represents a different survival strategy under repression—not merely to stay alive, but to remain human. Panahi stages this scene in an uninterrupted, back-and-forth pan, forming three distinct visual compositions—arguably the pinnacle of his cinematic mastery.
The film also functions as a prison allegory: prisons created by time and memory; the toolbox hiding the captive (evoking Hitchcock’s Rope); the minibus itself; and the endless desert. Panahi has lived in all of them—physical prison, house arrest, bans, and perhaps most painfully, the prison of memory.
Premiering in the main competition at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in May 2025, It Was Just an Accident received overwhelming acclaim and won the Palme d’Or. On Metacritic, it scored 91 from 41 critics. Reviewers hailed it as “a remarkable achievement” and “another striking serio-comic work from one of world cinema’s most courageous voices.”
Its international journey grew even more remarkable: France selected the film as its official submission for the 98th Academy Awards in the Best International Feature category. The Iran–France–Luxembourg co-production was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay. At the 83rd Golden Globe Awards, it earned nominations for Best Drama Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Foreign Language Film—becoming the first Iranian film ever nominated in those categories.
The irony is powerful: a director banned from filmmaking in his own country becomes France’s Oscar contender. Panahi’s outlawed status amplifies the film’s universal message. Every award becomes a slap in the face of the Iranian regime; every round of applause, an act of protest against censorship.
“Gift” Culture: The Institutionalization of Bribery in Iran
One striking detail in It Was Just an Accident is how frequently characters must pay bribes along their journey. This is no narrative coincidence—it exposes a deep societal wound.
In Iran, bribery has been institutionalized under the euphemism “gift.” While the word sounds innocent in Persian, in practice it has become the polite name for corruption. Clerics themselves debate the distinction: a gift has no expectation; a bribe does. Yet in everyday life, this distinction has collapsed entirely.
Bureaucracy, healthcare, education—even religious institutions—have become impossible to navigate without “gifts.” The 2013 Reza Zarrab scandal exposed the vast Iran–Turkey corruption network, implicating ministers and bureaucrats alike. Iran’s dual-currency system itself functions as a mechanism granting privileged businessmen advantages in exchange for bribes.
The real tragedy is this: in a society calling itself an Islamic Republic, corruption is no longer considered sinful, criminal, or even shameful. It has been normalized as a survival strategy.
Panahi’s film is merciless here. While the characters debate mercy versus revenge in the desert, they are simultaneously forced to bribe police officers. Grand moral dilemmas coexist with petty, routine corruption.
The film thus asks: What does it mean to oppose torture in such a system? Is the torturer only the prison guard—or also the bribe-taking policeman, the complicit bureaucrat, the silent neighbor?
The phrase “invisible accident” gains a second meaning: moral collapse itself is framed as an accident—no one takes responsibility; everyone says “that’s just how the system works.” Panahi’s camera tears away that false innocence.
Looking at Turkey, the parallels are unsettling. Both societies have experienced authoritarian consolidation, shrinking freedoms, persecution of artists, journalists, and activists. In both, corruption has become systemic, judicial independence eroded, and reckoning with the past obstructed.
Victims of torture after Turkey’s 1980 coup, families of the disappeared in the 1990s, survivors of custodial abuses in the 2000s, and those targeted after Gezi or post-2016 purges—all carry traumas much like Panahi’s characters. Many could identify their torturers by sound, smell, or touch.
Yet justice remains elusive in both countries. Investigations stall; perpetrators are protected. This is where It Was Just an Accident speaks directly to Turkey as well: What should victims do when official justice fails? Seek revenge—or preserve their humanity?
The film’s most powerful message is clear: no matter how well torturers hide, they will live forever in fear of exposure. The creak of a prosthetic leg becomes a metaphor for memory itself. The torturer may adopt a new identity, silence his conscience—but that sound betrays him.
This is not only cinematic truth; it is legal reality. Under Article 94/6 of the Turkish Penal Code, torture is not subject to statute of limitations. No matter how much time passes, prosecution remains possible—the same principle that allowed Nazi war criminals to be tried decades later.
Panahi adds an emotional dimension to this legal truth: torturers cannot escape psychologically either. Every familiar sound, smell, or encounter is a potential moment of recognition. In the end, regardless of forgiveness or revenge, the torturer is already imprisoned—in memory and conscience.
The film also affirms collective memory. Vahid is not alone. Shiva, Goli, Hamid—each contributes a piece of the truth. This is where hope lies for societies like Iran and Turkey: memory cannot be erased; testimonies accumulate; evidence emerges. Silenced voices become tomorrow’s history.
Panahi’s cinema is therefore an act of courage. Every film is testimony; every frame a marker of memory. It Was Just an Accident is not merely a thriller—it is a document for future generations: this is how we lived, this is how we resisted, this is how we demanded accountability.
And above all: this is how we tried to remain human.
In the end, the film’s core message is simple and devastating:
Cinema is life itself.
In sum, It Was Just an Accident does three things at once—revisiting the past, safeguarding the present, and imagining a future. For its characters, its director, and its audience alike.
And perhaps most importantly, it reminds torturers everywhere:
Time may pass—but the account remains open.
