It Was Just an Accident Review: Panahi’s Dark Road of Justice

A family’s late-night drive unspools like a waking dream—Eghbal’s headlights slice through Tehran’s outskirts before a stray dog darts into their path. The puncture of metal and the wash of red brake lights herald a collision that ruptures ordinary life. In Jafar Panahi’s It Was Just an Accident, this moment of accidental violence becomes the seed from which a tense moral labyrinth grows. Panahi returns to pure fiction after years of clandestine filmmaking, positioning his camera in a landscape that feels both familiar and unquiet.

Here, a simple act—running over an animal—spawns a question of identity, memory and justice. As the engine falters, the family stumbles into a warehouse where Vahid, a scar-marked figure, hears more than he sees. His recognition comes through a prosthetic creak, awakening a quest that sweeps up strangers bound by suffering.

Dark humour flickers through absurd detours—poetic asides that undercut terror—while drama coils tighter. This review will trace how Panahi stitches narrative and theme, sculpting images and sound into a meditation on trauma. It will probe his compositional choices, the raw power of non-professional actors and the emotional core that pulses beneath every echo of that fateful squeak.

Narrative Structure & Thematic Threads

Panahi confines us to a twenty-four-hour odyssey. It begins with the family’s crash and pivots to Vahid’s clandestine pursuit, then accelerates into a van-bound procession. Time is elastic—moments of breathless dread edged by pregnant pauses as captors and captive circle one another. The swap of viewpoints—innocent victim, vengeful survivor—upends our sympathies.

At the heart lies a question of proof: can a limp’s tortured squeak confirm a man’s guilt? Vahid’s single-sense detection becomes an obsession, stoking uncertainty that blooms among the group. What emerges is not a unified front but a fractious assembly, each scar-bearer clutching a fragment of truth. One demands blood for blood, another begs for mercy. Their debates—vengeance versus forgiveness—echo ancient philosophical dilemmas about justice.

Memory’s agency rides on sound and scent: the whirr of a prosthesis, the stale tang of sweat. These sensory triggers become conduits for collective trauma. Yet Panahi fractures bleakness with sly comedy—a reference to Waiting for Godot, a detour for pastries—allowing characters to breathe, to re-examine their impulses. Such comic jolts shift pacing, releasing tension for a heartbeat before hurling us back into moral reckoning.

Cinematic Craft & Directorial Choices

Panahi’s camera glides within the van in seamless long takes, each unbroken shot amplifying claustrophobia. Characters jostle for frame, their anguish and doubt captured in real time. Outside, fluorescent brake lights paint faces in lurid shades; the barren desert yawns in contrast, its pale expanse emphasizing isolation.

Sound design reigns supreme: the prosthetic’s tortured creak becomes a leitmotif, a pulse guiding narrative turns. City clamor intrudes—honking horns, distant prayers—only to retreat into desert hush. In these sonic rhythms, cruelty and calm coexist.

Editing shapes emotional rhythm. The abduction’s rapid cuts ratchet tension; hospital scenes dwell in measured, elegiac takes. A sudden pause on a wedding dress or a shared pastry punctures dread with fleeting warmth. These shifts invite us to consider how external pace mirrors inner conflict.

Directing non-actors, Panahi teases authenticity from every line. In tight ensemble scenes, dialogue crackles with unscripted edge. Performances feel lived-in, unvarnished; each glance, each tremor of the voice, reveals another layer of trauma. The result is a raw mosaic, each piece held in delicate equipoise by Panahi’s assured hand.

Character Arcs & Emotional Resonance

Vahid begins as an avenger with a single-minded grip on retribution. His journey curves inward as doubt gnaws at conviction. The ache in his kidney, the haunted set of his shoulders, speak of agony that no amount of vengeance can purge. By film’s end, uncertainty lingers like a whispered question: does justice require violence or compassion?

The bride-to-be, clad in a Western gown, embodies rage transmuted into agency. Her fierce demand for reckoning collides with the photographer’s quieter struggle to rebuild life in public view. Shiva’s refusal to don a headscarf becomes a silent manifesto—her resilience softens the edge of her grief. The hotheaded carpenter, voice raw with indignation, tests group unity; his fury reminds us how trauma can fracture solidarity. The elder skeptic, voice low and measured, stands as conscience incarnate, warning that cruelty begets cruelty.

When the family resurfaces—pregnant wife clinging to hope, child’s tremulous stare—the captors confront the human cost of their crusade. Sympathy shifts; roles blur. A rush to the hospital, a shared taste of dessert, unravel the black-and-white logic of revenge.

Panahi draws on personal history of confinement, asking whether punishment can ever heal. His final tableau offers no neat resolution. Instead, it bathes us in ambiguous light, where mercy and wrath dwell side by side. In that uneasy balance resides the film’s lingering power—an echo of trauma that refuses silence.

It Was Just an Accident premiered at the 78th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2025, competing for the Palme d’Or. The film is scheduled for theatrical release in France on September 10, 2025, under the title Un simple accident.

Full Credits

Director: Jafar Panahi

Writer: Jafar Panahi

Producers: Jafar Panahi, Philippe Martin

Co-Producers: Sandrine Dumas, Lilian Eche, Christel Henon

Cast: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr

Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Amin Jafari

Editor: Amir Etminan