IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT

Directed by: Jafar PanahiStarring: Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim AziziCertificate: 12AReleased: 5 DecemberRating: 8/10

On paper Jafar Panahi’s eleventh feature film might seem like a hard sell. Vahid, an Azerbaijani mechanic and white van man is working late one night in his Tehran workshop when he hears a familiar sound. A driver has broken down and asked to borrow some tools. As he limps through the garage, Vahid recognises the squeak of a prosthetic leg. It’s the same squeak, from the same leg, he’s sure, of the interrogator who tortured him when he was a political prisoner. Vahid is overcome with the lust for vengeance, and so he kidnaps the man, and drives out to the desert where he prepares to bury him alive.

So far, so grim. But the thing is, Vahid was blindfolded throughout his detention, and as his peglegged prisoner protests his innocence, he’s plagued by nagging doubts - can he really be sure this is his torturer? Would executing the wrong man make him just as bad as his captors? He needs to make sure, so he rounds up other one-time prisoners. Shiva and Goli are pretty sure they remember the awful stench of the interrogator’s sweat. Hamid touches the man’s leg and is convinced it’s the same stump his torturer once forced him to stroke. But no one can be sure.

This is a magisterial high wire act of trauma, humanity and the blackest of black comedy. And yet it’s a miracle we can see it all - Panahi was forced to film in secret, after his own imprisonment for supposedly creating propaganda against the Islamic republic in 2023, and the footage was smuggled out of the country, eventually winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes 2025.