It Was Just an Accident

What’s intended as a small act of kindness instead sets a traumatized everyman on a twisting path of revenge in this morally complex, psychologically astute thriller from the legendary Jafar Panahi. Having offered some late-night assistance to Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi) in the wake of an auto accident, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) grows convinced that he recognizes the supposed stranger’s voice as that of his torturer during a grueling prison spell. Enlisting others who endured interrogation at the hands of the same callous tormentor, Vahid abducts Eghbal and tries to motivate himself to brutally balance the scales of justice. But Eghbal insists, and quite compellingly so, that Vahid’s vigilantes have the wrong man.

Of course, Panahi is well-acquainted with the wraith of Iranian authorities. Directed in the wake of his latest incarceration for criticizing the government, It Was Just an Accident sees Panahi retaining his cutting sense of humour when it comes to cruel twists of fate, while drawing on an overt sense of outrage. Deserved winner of Cannes’ Palme d’Or, his latest is a dizzying, uncompromising tour-de-force.

Searing… a tragicomedy but doesn’t fit into a tidy categorical box. It’s a fiction that its writer-director Jafar Panahi has drawn straight from life, his own included, and which unpredictably mixes tones and story types. It’s a drama about retribution, a comedy about collective action (and action in general), a low-mileage road movie and a slow-boiling ethical thriller. It’s a cry from the heart, a comic howl in the dark and one of the year’s essential movies.

Manohla Dargis, New York Times

An endlessly fascinating and extraordinarily powerful work.

Bilge Eberi, New York magazine

Undoubtedly one of the year’s best, It Was Just An Accident is yet another moving, prickly and hopeful morality tale from Panahi about people (and a society) trying to find a way forward while processing the trauma of the past.

Radheyan Simonpillai, CBC