Despite the casual quality of its title, It Was Just an Accident—the latest film from dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi—carries serious moral weight. The movie centers on the quiet, unassuming Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri). During the course of a normal, average day, Vahid encounters someone whom he thinks might be the man who tortured him in prison years before. (This was after Vahid had been arrested for “collusion and propaganda against the regime,” a charge similar to the one that resulted in a real-life prison stint for Panahi.) Stuck between a state of shock and a desire for vengeance, Vahid trails the man (Ebrahim Azizi) and confers with former colleagues who were also tortured, asking them what should be done. Among those is a bride-to-be (Hadis Pakbaten) whom we meet during a photo shoot with the bridegroom (Majid Panahi). The photographer herself (Mariam Afshari) is another victim. As the tensions escalate and they discuss a plan of revenge, the bridegroom stands back and declares, “It’s going to be the end of you all.” How do we know he means this morally, not in the sense that they’ll be caught? Notice how the bride’s white gown grows dingier and dingier as the fraught day goes along. Not to sideline the current and historical political realities in Iran that produced (somewhat miraculously) a conscience-rattling work like It Was Just an Accident, but it’s hard to watch this in the United States in the fall of 2025 and not see something of our near future—for our filmmakers, for our everyday citizens, and for anyone who doesn’t fall in line with the regime closing its grip on the nation.
(11/5/2025)
