Prisoner and prison guard: Jafar Panahi's empathetic vision of cinema

His latest feature film, 'It Was Just An Accident', uses a child's morality to demand what it means to be human in a world shaped by power

In a 2009 interview with the Iranian writer Shiva Rahbaran, the director Jafar Panahi makes a distinction between a political and a social filmmaker. He argues that a political filmmaker instrumentalizes their art to propagate a political ideology or their party line; such films are popular as long as the political ideology is “en vogue”. A social filmmaker, as Panahi identifies himself, by contrast, uses their work to document social realities, without taking a political side. They do so not because they suffer from political apathy, but to document social realities and allow the audience to arrive at their own conclusions. “I don’t condemn anybody,” says Panahi. “They are all prisoners of this social system, and, in fact, there is no difference between the prisoner and the prison guard.”

 

 

Panahi, of course, has considerable experience as a prisoner. Since his third feature film, ‘Dayereh’ (‘The Circle’, 2000), which focused on the treatment of women under Iran’s current regime, Panahi has faced official censorship, with several of his films being banned in the country. In March 2010, Panahi was arrested and incarcerated at the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, and in December of that year, he was convicted of unlawful assembly and crimes against national security. He was sentenced to six years in prison and a 20-year ban on filmmaking and talking to the media. “When I received the initial sentence that banned me from working, it was a huge, profound psychological shock,” Panahi recently said at an interview. “I kept thinking, if I can’t work, then what can I do?” Released two months later, on bail, Panahi started making underground documentaries, often featuring himself.

 

The 2010 documentary ‘In film nist’ (‘This is Not a Film’) was smuggled out of the country on a USB drive, apparently hidden in a cake (though Panahi has claimed this is apocryphal). All his films since then — ‘Pardeh’ (‘Closed Curtain, 2013), ‘Taxi’ (2015), ‘Se rokh’ (‘3 Faces’, 2018) and ‘Jaddeh Khaki’ (‘No Bears, 2022) — have been described as “meta-reflexive” meditations on “the practical and ethical questions inherent to filmmaking under a ban”. His reflexive turn has, however, also been critiqued, with Columbia University-based Iran studies and comparative literature professor Hamid Dabashi writing in 2013 that Panahi’s self-reflexivity is borne out of anger and his output lacks the sharpness of his previous work: “Given the political sentiments that film festival authorities around the globe have for Panahi, they indulge him in a political solidarity that dulls the wit of his cinematic judgment. These consolation prizes are a curse in disguise.”  

 

Panahi’s latest film, ‘Yek tasadof-e sadeh’ (‘It Was Just an Accident’, 2025), is a departure from his previous films. It is a fictional feature in which a group of Tehran residents, who have experienced incarceration and torture, kidnap a man they suspect is their jailer, to extract revenge. It won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival last year, where it debuted. While Panahi was travelling abroad, he was convicted by the Iranian government, “in absentia”, for allegedly making anti-national propaganda, and sentenced to a two-year travel ban. Currently in the US, where his film has been nominated in the Best Foreign Film category at the 98th Academy Awards, to be held on 15-16 March, Panahi hopes to return to Iran; his homecoming, however, is going to be complicated, not only because of his conviction, which he plans to appeal, but also the US and Israel’s war on Iran.

 

The film begins with a man, who has a prosthetic leg, driving a car at night with his wife and young daughter. He accidentally hits and kills a dog, upsetting his daughter, Nilufar (Delnaz Najafi). When the wife tries to justify the incident as an accident, saying God must have put the dog in the way of the car, the girl replies: “He killed an animal. God has nothing to do with it.” When the car breaks down a little later, the man goes to a garage, where a mechanic, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), recognises him as Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), a member of the secret police who had tortured him, by the sound of his prosthetic leg.

 

The next day, Vahid tracks down Eghbal and kidnaps him, but he cannot confirm his identity because he has never seen him. In prison, Vahid was always blindfolded during his interrogation and torture. Vahid goes to several other former prisoners — Salar (Georges Hashemzadeh), Shiva (Mariam Afshari), Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), Ali (Majid Panahi) and Hamid (Mohammad Ali Elyasmehr) — all of whom have been tortured in prison. However, they cannot arrive at a consensus about what to do with him. When the kidnapped man’s cellphone rings, they find out that his pregnant wife has fainted. Vahid drives the man’s wife and daughter to the hospital, where she gives birth to a son.

 

When the other kidnappers are frustrated and leave them, Vahid and Shiva drive the kidnapped man to the outskirts of the city and tie him to a tree. After initially refusing to accept his identity, the captive confesses to being Eghbal. He asserts that his actions were justified to protect the regime, and if they kill him, he will become a martyr. Shiva demands an apology from Eghbal, and when he apologizes, they set him free and drive away. What opens as an action thriller becomes a profound meditation on the nature of human action, demanding whether our deeds, both thoughtful and thoughtless, are borne out of free will, the will of a higher power, or are just a series of simple accidents.

 

Ultimately, Panahi’s film returns to the ethical terrain that has long defined his cinema: the fragile line between victim and perpetrator. By refusing easy revenge or moral certainty, the narrative reflects his belief that individuals remain trapped within larger social systems. The captors’ uncertainty mirrors the audience’s own struggle to judge responsibility in a world shaped by power, trauma and chance. Rather than delivering political instruction, the film invites reflection on accountability, forgiveness and the limits of justice. In doing so, Panahi reaffirms his commitment to social filmmaking that observes, questions and ultimately trusts viewers to confront difficult conclusions.

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  Uttaran Das Gupta is an independent writer and journalist