Urgent thriller made in the shadow of authoritarian rule

The Palme d'Or-winning 'It Was Just an Accident' arrives in the same week as its director received a jail sentence, writes Clarisse Loughrey - a stark example of real life imitating art

- Clarisse Loughrey

Early in 2023, the Iranian regime lifted, without warning, the 20-year ban it had placed on director Jafar Panahi, which prevented him from leaving the country and attempted to prevent him from making films (he made them, instead, in secret). He'd been interrogated, imprisoned. He'd been on hunger strike. Once freed, he made It Was Just an Accident, again in secrecy. Much of it, for practical reasons, was shot in enclosed vehicles.

Panahi was able to safely travel to this year's Cannes Film Festival to premiere the film, where it won the Palme d'Or.

This week, he was sentenced in absentia to a year in prison and a travel ban for “propaganda activities” while he was promoting the film abroad. It is that constant, needless cruelty, the perpetual hover of the authoritarian hand, that casts its sickly shadow over It Was Just an Accident.