Jafar Panahi sank into his chair against a brick wall and stared into the Zoom call. “It’s like you’re looking at me from the bottom of a well,” he said, half-joking, studying my video feed.

I was supposed to meet Panahi in person for the North American premiere of It Was Just an Accident, his first film since being released from prison in Tehran two years ago. But due to the U.S. government shutdown, his visa didn’t come through in time, so my trip from upstate New York to the city proved pointless, and we had to resort to Zoom. Ever the director, Panahi instructed me to adjust my camera so the right amount of my head and torso was in frame. Only then was he ready to talk.

Jafar Panahi sank into his chair against a brick wall and stared into the Zoom call. “It’s like you’re looking at me from the bottom of a well,” he said, half-joking, studying my video feed.

I was supposed to meet Panahi in person for the North American premiere of It Was Just an Accident, his first film since being released from prison in Tehran two years ago. But due to the U.S. government shutdown, his visa didn’t come through in time, so my trip from upstate New York to the city proved pointless, and we had to resort to Zoom. Ever the director, Panahi instructed me to adjust my camera so the right amount of my head and torso was in frame. Only then was he ready to talk.

Jafar Panahi is one of the most celebrated filmmakers alive. Just months before we talked, he’d won the Palme d’Or at Cannes, making him only the fifth filmmaker in history (and the only living one) to win the top prize at all three major European festivals. Yet to many Iranians, Panahi is known as much for his defiance as for his cinema. His political outspokenness and global visibility have long brought him into conflict with the government, which remains uneasy with independent artists. This tension reached a breaking point in 2010, following the Green Movement protests. While Panahi was working on a film with his friend and collaborator Mohammad Rasoulof, security agents raided his home, confiscated their equipment, and hauled them and several others to Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison.

Behind bars, Panahi went on hunger strike, sparking outrage across the international film community. At Cannes, the jury placed an empty chair onstage to highlight his absence. By the end of the year, a court had convicted Panahi of “assembly and colluding with the intention to commit crimes against the country’s national security and propaganda against the Islamic Republic,” and issued a draconian sentence: six years in prison and a 20-year ban from filmmaking, giving interviews, and leaving the country.

Panahi was released after a few months, placed under house arrest, and went on to make several films in secret. In 2022, he was once again arrested and imprisoned, triggering outrage. This time, upon his release seven months later, a judge dropped the charges and lifted Panahi’s outstanding ban. Then Panahi got to work. It Was Just an Accident is the first film he has made in relative freedom in almost two decades.

In the last few months, Panahi has given dozens of interviews while traveling internationally to promote It Was Just an Accident, which has been the subject of much critical acclaim. But little has been said about how it fits into his broader cinematic project. I have followed Panahi’s career closely, watched every movie shortly after it came out, and spent many hours in dorm rooms and cafes in Tehran discussing his work with my peers and friends. This compelled me to view his last film in the context of his body of work as a filmmaker. It Was Just an Accident has unmistakable echoes with Panahi’s earlier work, but it also feels like a departure: a more ambitious chapter from a filmmaker who has spent three decades testing the boundaries of cinema and the limits of expression.

A film still from It Was Just an Accident.Jafar Panahi Productions, Les Films Pelléas, Bidibul Productions, Pio & Co, and Arte France Cinéma

“He who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster,” the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in his 1886 book, Beyond Good and Evil. “For when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.” It’s a fitting summary for It Was Just an Accident.

Vahid, a former political prisoner at Evin, works as a mechanic on the outskirts of Tehran. One evening, a car pulls up outside his workplace, and the driver asks for help. Vahid overhears and recognizes the voice instantly—it’s Eghbal, the man who once tortured him in prison. Although he was blindfolded throughout his interrogations, Vahid remembers the voice, as well as the squeak of the man’s artificial limb.

After the car is repaired, Vahid follows Eghbal home. He kidnaps Eghbal the next day and drives him to a remote spot outside Tehran. He is about to bury the man alive when Eghbal begins to plead, insisting he is not who Vahid thinks he is. Vahid wells up with doubt, uncertain if he has the correct man. So he calls up his fellow former prisoners, two men and two women, who cram into Vahid’s van and set off on a strange odyssey across Tehran to confirm the man’s identity.

None of them are sure, until Hamid comes on board. In prison, Hamid was forced to touch his interrogator’s wounded leg, so when he sees Eghbal, he easily identifies him as the ruthless man who ruined........

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