It Was Just an Accident

A 2025 drama written and directed by Jafar Panahi. It begins with a chance meeting: a group of people recognise in a stranger the man who had a hand in their imprisonment. They cannot verify for themselves that it is the same man. A choice stands before them: what to do with that knowledge, and whether it is theirs to act on at all. From there the film rests on that choice and on the responsibility it lays upon each of them, while the circumstances of the past come out in their conversations. Revenge is both the subject and the trap here: there is no certainty in the identification, and the price of a mistake does not go away. The action takes place in Iran, in Tehran. The director's own position is the substance of the work: for years Panahi was barred from his profession at home and worked under bans on filming and on travel, shooting by the smallest possible means, in his own flat and inside a car, as in This Is Not a Film and Taxi. This picture was made after his release and carried to the largest of the international festivals. Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi and Hadis Pakbaten take the leading parts, with Majid Panahi, George Hashemzadeh and Delmaz Najafi alongside them. Les Films Pelléas, Arte France Cinéma and Bidibul Productions made the film together across Iran, France and Luxembourg, with Philippe Martin, David Thion and the director as producers. The picture was shown at a festival on 20 May 2025, where it drew an eight-minute standing ovation and took the top award; it opened in cinemas on 1 October 2025 and reached other territories on 15 January 2026. It was received as one of the strongest works of the year, with reviewers writing about its fusion of suspense, bitter satire and unexpected humour, and about its final act in particular.