Jafar Panahi’s It was Just an Accident (2025) is a powerful human drama which is an artistic response to the systemic oppression and violence of the Iranian regime. Refusing to be constrained by power, Panahi, who has repeatedly faced imprisonment and restrictions for his outspoken filmmaking, shot the film covertly evading Iranian authorities. Most of his stories serve as reflections of a society that finds it hard to breathe freely. His most recent one is a direct jab at the Iranian state, how it treats dissident activists and those who demand fundamental rights.

Blending wry humour with the traumatic experience of five survivors, it shows them grappling with their morality and the lingering scars of authoritarian violence. Mehdi Mahmoudian, who co-wrote the screenplay with Panahi while they were serving sentence together in prison, was arrested again in February 2026 for signing an open letter criticising the regime’s crackdown on protesters. He was released later. Panahi, post his Cannes and Academy wins, faces trial on “propaganda” charges. Despite the threat of prison and renewed restrictions, Panahi chose to return to Iran after the film’s international run, refusing exile even as the state continues to criminalise dissent.

The film opens with an accident. A man drives at night with his pregnant wife and young daughter when their car strikes and kills a dog. His wife, a traditionally veiled woman, calms their shocked daughter saying that “It was just an accident.” Seeking repairs for the car, the man limps into a garage on a prosthetic leg that produces a distinctive and rhythmic squeak. This auditory clue triggers a visceral reaction in Vahid, the Azerbaijani mechanic working there. Blindfolded during his own imprisonment and torture years earlier for participating in labour protests, Vahid remembers only the voice and the unmistakable gait of his tormentor Eghbal, nicknamed “Peg Leg”.

Convinced that this man is Eghbal, Vahid, as a reflex action to his trauma, kidnaps him and drives him in his van towards the desert with plans to bury him alive. What begins as a revenge plot by a former political prisoner, soon turns into something far more complex that spirals out of control. And the prosthetic leg serves as a potent motif. Its sound haunts Vahid, resurfacing at key moments to underscore how trauma imprints itself on the senses.

Early on, the noise confirms Eghbal’s suspected identity and propels the kidnapping. Towards the end, after Vahid releases his hostage, the same squeak echoes again in the distance. Panahi does not use this repetition simply to close a loop. It lingers as an ominous reminder that the nightmare of state violence is never truly over. Eghbal represents not just one individual but the entire apparatus of a repressive regime that can reappear at any moment.

A small group of fellow former prisoners join Vahid: Shiva, Hamid, Goli, and Ali—who were all tormented by the same regime operative. Together, they debate Eghbal’s identity and fate while the bound man lies in the back of the van. The story makes a dramatic use of confined spaces. The tight settings in some scenes heighten the tension, turning the film into a claustrophobic moral chamber where characters confront not only their past suffering but also the ethical cost of becoming what they despise. A space has a potent capacity to make an effect on us.

The five main characters each carry distinctly different temperaments, shaped by a shared trauma. Vahid, who has kidnapped and is now holding Eghbal hostage in the van, remains deeply confused. Despite his strong intuition that this is the perpetrator, he refuses to harm the man until the others confirm his identity beyond doubt. Shiva, though certain that this is their tormentor, recoils at the idea of violence; she fears that hurting him would reduce them to the same level as their oppressor.

In stark contrast, Hamid, Shiva’s ex-partner, is absolutely convinced of Eghbal’s guilt and is impatient to “take care of him” while the others deliberate. His philosophy is blunt: “If you don’t kill, you get killed.” Goli, dressed in her wedding attire and accompanied by her soon-to-be husband Ali, himself a former victim, initially reacts with raw rage as she recounts the brutal treatment she endured. Yet by the end, she softens, chooses to leave with Ali, and leaves the final decision to Shiva and Vahid.

It is fascinating how Panahi lets life intrude while they deliberate about Vahid. Eghbal’s wife goes into labour. Vahid, the same man plotting revenge, finds himself rushing her to the hospital, bribing staff for better care, and even distributing sweets to celebrate the newborn’s arrival. In that moment, the would-be avengers exhibit kindness and responsibility toward the very family tied to their oppressor.

This unplanned compassion disrupts their original intent. What began as a revenge drama becomes a meditation on forgiveness, empathy, and the shared vulnerability of ordinary Iranians under an oppressive system. Panahi shows that decency persists even amid rage. Perhaps these characters are not monsters but flawed humans shaped by a circumstance.

This pivot highlights a central irony. Vahid and his companions risk mirroring their torturers if they proceed with violence. By choosing mercy by letting Eghbal go, they reclaim a fragment of their own humanity. The film does not offer easy redemption; the ambiguity remains. Releasing Eghbal does not guarantee safety or closure. The final sound of the prosthetic leg suggests the cycle of torment and abuse by the regime could resume.

Stylistically, It Was Just an Accident is unmistakably Panahi. For a good part, the film is built around his signature car-bound shots—inside, outside, over, and around the vehicle—much like in Taxi Tehran, This Is Not a Film, and his other confined-space works. Yet even within these familiar constraints, Panahi does not fail to deliver a fresh and compelling viewing experience. The claustrophobic framing in his films never feels suffocating in a cinematic sense; instead, it becomes a powerful metaphor for the smothering reality faced by dissenting Iranians. Panahi does not merely depict oppression; he invites us to feel it viscerally, transforming confinement into something deeply bothering.

The film also moves ahead as a darkly absurd drama. In one memorable scene, Hamid confronts Shiva, bitterly accusing her of abandoning him because he was not financially successful. Behind them stands a skeletal, barren tree, silently witnessing their charged exchange. Hamid explicitly references Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, drawing a parallel to their own situation: they are not waiting for Godot, but for a moral decision about what to do with Eghbal. As the story progresses, events take increasingly absurd turns.

Through these conflicting responses, Panahi dismantles any illusion that the Iranian regime, that claims to be driven by lofty religious ideals, is either efficient or disciplined. On the contrary, he exposes a system that is corrupt at its core, with no institutional mechanism to confront that corruption. Beneath the facade of religious fundamentalism and military authoritarianism lies a failing bureaucracy. Ordinary Iranians, from highway officers to hospital staff, must navigate a rotten system that simultaneously exploits and brutalises its citizens.

Panahi reveals how the regime fractures society, turning neighbours into potential informants or victims. In such a climate, the only recourse left to ordinary people is dissent. Yet dissent in Iran often comes at the price of freedom or even life itself. The Iranian regime has perfected the art of ruling through fear. Its ability to maintain domestic support and international endorsement, particularly from vocal sections of the “anti-imperialist Left”, even while killing its own citizens is a grim testament to this.

While the state openly declares it will hunt down every dissenter and eliminate them, filmmakers like Panahi live under constant threat, branded as servants of imperialism for exercising freedom of expression. Meanwhile, the younger generation of the ruling elite comfortably enjoys life in Western capitals; a glaring hypocrisy at the heart of the system.

Through his character of Shiva, who does not wear hijab for most of the film, Panahi pays quiet tribute to women resisting compulsory hijab and broader patriarchal control. Shiva’s presence evokes the enduring spirit of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement sparked by the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.

The regime still continues its crackdown: women face harassment, arrest, and violence for defying dress codes and the executions have also surged. In 2025, Iran carried out at least 1,700 executions, the highest number since 1989, often targeting protesters, dissidents, and minorities. Those who defend or overlook this reality do not merely tolerate hypocrisy; they actively side against the very dissenters who are essential to holding any regime accountable.

Not an accident

In pondering the title, one returns to the central question: what is the accident here? Is it the car crash in the very beginning of the film that sets events in motion? Is it Vahid’s instinctive reaction to take a human hostage upon being triggered by auditory reminder? Is it the sudden labour pains of the hostage’s wife that derail the kidnapping? Most profoundly, is it the unexpected eruption of kindness in people primed for hatred? Or, is it the unplanned pivot that reveals their shared humanity?

The ending leaves viewers unsettled. After releasing Eghbal, Vahid hears the familiar sound again. Will the man seek revenge? Has mercy changed anything? Panahi offers no tidy resolution, only the lingering echo of footsteps. In Iran, where protests flare and executions mount, the nightmare feels perpetual. The regime may claim incidents are isolated, but the film lays bare the deliberate machinery behind them.

None of this diminishes the devastating civilian toll of the ongoing US-Israeli attacks on Iran, which have killed thousands, including innocent children and women, damaged civilian infrastructure and historically important monuments, and pushed ordinary Iranians deeper into fear, displacement, chaos, and uncertainty.

If there is one moral imperative expected of us as spectators to the unfolding violence waged in the name of war and geopolitical power games, whether in Gaza, Lebanon, or elsewhere—it is to stand firmly with the powerless. Yet condemning the United States and Israel for breaching Iran’s sovereignty does not absolve the Iranian regime of its own brutal violations against the sovereignty and dignity of its own people. One truth does not cancel the other. Both must be confronted simultaneously.

Unfortunately, many among the anti-imperialist Left have been refusing to count beyond two for a long time now. Soon after the Shah was deposed in 1979 by a coalition of anti-monarchy protestors, the Islamists gained ground over the rest and began consolidating power.

When Ayatollah Khomeini took ownership of the revolution, leftists, feminists and other progressives were suppressed, often brutally. It was ironic when Iranian feminists influenced by French feminists like Simone de Beauvoir were being jailed; other French radicals like Michel Foucault were supporting the Islamic Revolution in the name of anti-imperialism. A theory disconnected from the lived realities of people becomes obsolete and soon turns into empty sloganeering.

This is what Panahi, along with other dissenting Iranians, urges us to see. Because the systematic oppression, fear, and silencing that occur inside Iran, far beyond the immediate destruction of war, is not accidental. It is deliberate, structural, and ongoing.

Vilasini Ramani is a translator and filmmaker based in Bengaluru.

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