Jafar Panahi is a towering personality in the world of cinema. He has repeatedly shown the world that filmmakers can even risk their lives to make films. Defying multiple deadly adversities and death threats, he keeps raising his voice against the oppression and atrocities of common Iranians committed by the Iranian regime. He was kept behind bars for 4 months, and he was banned from filmmaking for 20 years; still, the Iranian regime could not stop him from making films. They won’t be able to do it in the future as well. In his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, a car mechanic, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), identifies his former prison tormentor, Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), by the squeaky sound from his prosthetic leg. He kidnaps the man the next day and takes him to a deserted land in his car. When the tormentor denies his identity, He reaches out to other former political prisoners to identify the man. They recognize him, but can’t confirm his identity, as all of them were blindfolded during the torture by this man. Finally, the man accepts his identity, and they allow him to leave unharmed. The film vividly shows that an oppressive regime commits heinous atrocities against its people, yet the tormented ordinary Iranians don’t embrace the path of violence. Even at the moment of supreme vengeance, they maintain restraint and show empathy.
The ending of It Was Just an Accident is incredibly thrilling and important. A white car, which appears to be Eghbal’s car, enters Vahid’s house premises when he loads his van to attend a family function. Suddenly, Vahid hears the same squeaking sound inside his house and freezes in his tracks. However, Eghbal is not shown on the screen. Is it an illusion of his trauma? Or does Eghbal really enter his house to show that Vahid has been tracked and will be under strict surveillance from now on? Jafar Panahi keeps the film open-ended and does not provide the viewers with a direct answer.
Director Jafar Panahi chose the ironic title It Was Just an Accident for the film. Eghbal indeed kills the stray dog by accident while driving at night with his heavily pregnant wife and daughter. However, committing the cold-blooded, systemic, and inhuman tortures and atrocities on political dissidents by the Iranian authoritarian and theocratic regime is not just an accident. International media could report only a few cases of atrocities and torture; however, the majority are suppressed by the Iranian regime. Thousands of political opponents have been eliminated over the past few years. Many dissidents disappeared without a trace. Inhuman tortures like flogging and amputation are carried out inside prisons. Women are denied full freedom and compelled to wear hijab. Ethnic minorities like Arabs, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Balochs, and Zoroastrians are treated like second-class citizens. Executions are carried out frequently. Citizens are threatened, terrorized, targeted, and persecuted regularly. They are denied their basic human rights. An unflinching and towering film personality, Jafar Panahi, holds the courage to raise his voice against this oppressive, authoritarian, and theocratic Iranian regime through his films.