Jafar Panahi, the acclaimed director whose latest film It Was Just an Accident is France’s powerful official entry for the International Oscar, opens up about the immense personal and political weight behind his work in an exclusive interview, per deadline.com.
Meeting on Zoom, Panahi is all smiles—a stark contrast to the real-life oppression and torture that inspired his film. He recalls the triumphant moment at the Cannes closing night soirée, holding the Palme d’Or, but reveals his happiness was rooted in a tense phone call he received the night before—from prison.
That call was from Mehdi Mahmoudian, an Iranian political journalist and human rights campaigner. Mahmoudian and other inmates had seen Panahi’s impassioned world premiere speech and were certain the film would win the top prize.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘They’ve put me in a really bad place,’ because if I don’t win tomorrow, whatever happiness they had is going to turn into despair,” Panahi confesses, describing the “heavy burden” he felt walking into the closing ceremony. When his name was called, the relief was profound. “I just had a sigh of relief, and I realized that everyone around me is standing and clapping and I am lying back on my chair with a happy conscience.”
It Was Just an Accident follows Vahid, a mechanic, who kidnaps the government security officer he believes tortured him in prison. The chilling revenge thriller was a clandestine shoot in Iran, filmed after Panahi’s latest release from jail.
Having been banned from making films in his homeland and jailed twice by the Islamic Republic, Panahi and his crew are masters of evasion. He details the extraordinary security measures they took, shooting sequences with less risk first, starting in the desert and then moving into the city with the camera inside a car.
The shoot was not without incident. Panahi recounts the moment the set was raided: “We saw that there were about 15 plainclothes [officers] who have gathered around my team and are waiting for us.” Though they had hidden the equipment, police questioned and threatened the team, forcing Panahi to cancel work for a month before completing the necessary final scenes with a much smaller crew. Post-production was finished in Paris.
Panahi discusses his masterful use of humour and slapstick juxtaposed against backdrops of brutality. He explains the humour “comes itself,” such as the hilarious reveal that he was wearing his wife’s glasses during his triumphant Cannes speech. This blend is crucial: “If I had to look for humor… you wouldn’t really believe the scenes that you were seeing.”
The film poses a crucial question: “Is the cycle of violence going to continue in the future, or is it coming to an end at some point?” The director firmly believes that “you cannot delete violence with violence,” a principle he weaves into the film’s narrative, which showcases the underlying dignity of people broken by an authoritarian state.
Panahi also touches on the powerful symbolism in the film regarding the mandatory hijab rule, including scenes where the photographer Shiva is seen without a head covering. He notes that if they had only shown women with veils, they would be “compromising the sense of realism” in their work, acknowledging the immense sacrifices women have made to resist the ruling.
Ultimately, Panahi says his films are driven by a sense of realism and emotion. The haunting, sinister ending is not a conscious Hitchcock device, but rather a “shared, lived experience in countries with authoritarian regimes.”
The filmmaker is currently staying in the U.S. due to the constant difficulty of securing visas to travel in support of the film, as his passport is often held up by embassies.
Despite the relentless restrictions, Panahi is resolute: “We still have been able to find a way to make films with all the limitations.”
