Review | Cannes 2025: Palme d’Or winner It Was Just an Accident movie review – Iran-set dark comedy
Twice imprisoned director imagines a freer Iran, but authoritarianism is never far away in a story about morality, memory and abuse of power
4/5 stars
In It Was Just An Accident, women in Iran can choose to appear and work in public without headscarves, and wear Western-style bridal dresses in the open. Modern bookshops do brisk business, and – perhaps most strikingly – paroled dissidents can rebuild their lives without hassle from the authorities.
In contrast to his previous films, the twice imprisoned Jafar Panahi – who is now allowed to work and travel freely after having his convictions overturned by Iranian courts – seems to have set It Was Just An Accident somewhere in an imagined, brighter future, when authoritarianism and religious dogma have receded into the distance.
As suppressed anguish takes over, however, the film turns into one dark nightmare. Could past traumas be so easily forgotten – and how should those who suffered confront or make peace with their tormentors in a land of relative freedom?
Filmed in Iran without official approval, It Was Just an Accident offers masterfully scripted, highly contemplative drama about the after-effects of political tyranny on the individual.
In between, Panahi has also laced his movie with dollops of jet-black, Beckett-like comedy, with the characters name-checking Beckett’s play Waiting for Godot in one scene.