WATCH PARTY: It Was Just An Accident (2025) Jafar Panahi @ South Norfolk Library

Iran has too many great directors for a country that treats them like such crap. Panahi was released from prison just in time to attend this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where this movie took home the Palme d’Or.

RATED: PG-13 for “thematic elements, violence, strong language, and smoking”

RUNTIME: 106 minutes

SYNOPSIS: An unassuming mechanic, Vahid, has a chance encounter with a man he suspects to be his former sadistic jailhouse captor, Eghbal. Panicked, Vahid kidnaps the man and rounds up a few of his fellow ex-prisoners to try and confirm the man's identity. As the bickering group drives around Tehran with the captive, they must confront how far to take matters with their presumed tormentor.

BLURBS:

“It’s a film of overwhelmingly visceral emotion; impossible, then, to separate from what we imagine Panahi must feel himself. And yet, so often, we’ll see characters clamber over each other and wheel around their limbs like they’re in a Buster Keaton comedy.” - Clarisse Loughrey, Guardian (UK)

“It’s a movie of righteous fury and bleak comedy, a howl of anguish that ends in a sputtering laugh.” - Sam Adams, Slate

“There are no wasted shots and no squandered moments in this picture because it understands that cinema is life, imbued with the power to rediscover the past, to protect the present, and to imagine a future.” - Robert Daniels, *RogerEbert.com*