It Was Just an Accident – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

It Was Just an Acci­dent – first-look review

21 May 2025

Words by David Jenkins

Three people standing next to an open van in a desert landscape, one person wearing a white wedding dress and the other two wearing casual clothes.
Three people standing next to an open van in a desert landscape, one person wearing a white wedding dress and the other two wearing casual clothes.
Iran­ian direc­tor Jafar Panahi deliv­ers a Palme-ready thriller explor­ing the high price of revenge on a poten­tial­ly evil man.

You’d be right to want to exact cold revenge on a per­son who tor­tured you and plant­ed night­mare imagery of death and suf­fer­ing in your mind for life. Yet would you go so far as to mur­der them for the greater good, as penance for not only your own trau­ma, but for the many oth­ers who suf­fered as a result of their state-approved methods?

This is a ques­tion at the fore­front of Iran­ian film­mak­er Jafar Panahi’s mind, as he was one of those peo­ple who was arrest­ed, placed in cus­tody under spu­ri­ous charges and made to suf­fer the gross indig­ni­ties of phys­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal tor­ture because he dared to resist the régime. His bril­liant new film, It Was Just an Acci­dent, extrap­o­lates and drama­tis­es his waver­ing, post-incar­na­tion thought pat­terns as he pon­ders the true val­ue or mor­tal revenge against his patri­ot­ic oppressors.

It starts, as so many Panahi films do, in a car, with a man dri­ving his heav­i­ly preg­nant wife and pre-teen daugh­ter through the night. They hit a stray dog and the car stalls in the mid­dle of nowhere, yet they find a kind man who offers them assis­tance in a small factory.

The car’s dri­ver has a pros­thet­ic leg and walks with a dis­tinct squeak, which is heard by and trig­gers anoth­er man on the upstairs floor named Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri). He enters into a state of fren­zied shock and, when the fam­i­ly even­tu­al­ly dri­ves off, he decides to fol­low them dis­crete­ly in his mini­van. With the help of some shack­les and a shov­el, he waits for his moment and then attacks the man on the street for rea­sons that aren’t ini­tial­ly clear. He bun­dles him in the van, and then with mad-eyed des­per­a­tion he comes with­in a hair’s breadth of bury­ing his pris­on­er alive.

He firm­ly believes that the man with the squeaky limp is the feared jail­er known as Peg-Leg” whose actions caused last­ing dam­age to Vahid’s body and mind, as well as count­less neg­a­tive knock-on effects in his fam­i­ly life. But at the very last sec­ond, he ques­tions whether this is in fact the right man, and his doubt fuels a road-trip around a bustling Tehran in search of cor­rob­o­ra­tors who can pos­i­tive­ly iden­ti­fy this poten­tial monster.

It’s a beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten and exe­cut­ed work, one of Panahi’s most for­mal­ly straight­for­ward yet pow­er­ful, grip­ping and gen­er­ous. As the clock ticks on and the van fills up with folks from all walks of life who also want their pound of flesh, the messi­ness of life makes itself felt and the sim­ple task at hand becomes more com­plex as a broad­er pic­ture of their cap­tor emerges.

Panahi has always been a philo­soph­i­cal and mag­nan­i­mous film­mak­er when it comes to ques­tions of cen­sor­ship and vio­lence, often propos­ing cre­ative and peace­able solu­tions to prob­lems that could eas­i­ly be dealt with through vio­lence. In the case of this new film, it’s brac­ing and a lit­tle bit scary to see him shift towards an ambigu­ous mid­dle ground, where whim­si­cal diplo­ma­cy may no longer be an option.

To keep cel­e­brat­ing the craft of film, we have to rely on the sup­port of our mem­bers. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.

You might like

Accessibility Settings

Text

Applies the Open Dyslexic font, designed to improve readability for individuals with dyslexia.

Applies a more readable font throughout the website, improving readability.

Underlines links throughout the website, making them easier to distinguish.

Adjusts the font size for improved readability.

Visuals

Reduces animations and disables autoplaying videos across the website, reducing distractions and improving focus.

Reduces the colour saturation throughout the website to create a more soothing visual experience.

Increases the contrast of elements on the website, making text and interface elements easier to distinguish.