Iranian Jafar Panahi wins the Palme d'Or in Cannes

Jafar Panahi never wanted to be a political filmmaker. "By my definition, a political filmmaker defends an ideology that the good follow and the bad oppose," says the Iranian director. "But in my films, even those who behave badly are shaped by the system, not by personal choices," Panahi told Deutsche Welle.

But for more than a decade, Panahi has had little choice. Because he supported the protests of the opposition Green Movement in Iran against then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2009, the director of "The White Balloon" and "The Circle" was punished with a 20-year filming ban and was barred from traveling abroad. That didn't stop him.

Over time, he found ever-new ways to shoot, edit, and smuggle his films out of the country. Sometimes he transformed his living room into a film set ("This Is Not a Film"), sometimes he converted a car into a mobile studio (in the film "Taxi Tehran," which won the Golden Bear at the 2015 Berlinale ).

This week, Panahi returned to the spotlight—not through smuggled footage or video calls, but in person. After more than 20 years, the now 64-year-old returned to the Cannes International Film Festival to present his latest film. "It Was Just an Accident" received an eight-minute standing ovation at the festival.

From prison to palace

But his path to the glittering center of the film world was anything but smooth. Panahi was last arrested again in July 2022 and imprisoned in Tehran's notorious Evin Prison. After almost seven months and a hunger strike, he was released in February 2023. Iran's Supreme Court overturned his original 2010 verdict, a resounding legal victory for Panahi. Now, while legally free, he was still artistically exposed to a system he refused to submit to. "To officially make a film in Iran, you have to submit your script to the Ministry of Islamic Guidance for approval," he told DW. "That's not possible for me. So I made another secret film."

In "It Was Just an Accident," Panahi takes a very direct look at state violence and oppression. The secretly shot film shows unveiled women defying Iran's hijab law. It tells the story of a group of former prisoners who believe they have found the man who tortured them. Now they must decide whether to take revenge on him. The taut drama unfolds like a psychological thriller.

Stylistically, "It Was Just An Accident" breaks significantly with the more restrained and largely self-reflective works Panahi made during his official ban. Yet the plot remains strongly autobiographical.

A thriller with depth

The film begins with a seemingly banal incident. A man accidentally runs over a dog with his car. Mechanic Vahid (Valid Mobasseri), who is supposed to repair the damaged car, believes he recognizes his former tormentor in the owner, Eghbal, alias Peg-Leg. He kidnaps him and intends to bury him alive in the desert. But he can't be sure he's caught the right man, because he was blindfolded during his internment. "During interrogation or when we left our cells, they kept our eyes blindfolded," Panahi recalls of his time in prison. "The only place you could remove the blindfold was in the bathroom."

In search of certainty, the mechanic turns to former fellow prisoners. Soon, Vahid's van fills with victims seeking revenge on the man who abused them for rebelling against the authorities. There's a bride (Hadis Pakbaten) who leaves her own wedding with her wedding photographer, Shiva (Maryam Afshari), a former prison inmate, to confront the man who raped and tortured her. Or Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), a man so traumatized and angry by his experiences that he doesn't care whether the right man was caught; he only wants revenge. "Even dead, they are a scourge of humanity," he says of all the intelligence agents serving under the regime.

As the group debates revenge or non-violence, Panahi intersperses brutal descriptions of the beatings and torture they endured with moments of humor and absurdity. The hostage takers cross paths with Eghbal's family, including his heavily pregnant wife, and suddenly have to take her to the hospital to give birth. Afterwards, the mechanic Vahid, as is traditional in Iran, goes to a bakery to buy pastries for everyone.

"The regime itself makes the films"

"All the characters you see in this film are inspired by conversations I had in prison, by stories people told me about the violence and brutality of the Iranian government," Panahi says in Cannes, "violence that has been going on for more than four decades now." He adds: "In a sense, I'm not the one who made this film. It's the Islamic Republic, because they put me in prison. If they want to stop us from being so subversive, maybe they should stop putting us in prison."

During his 20-year filming ban, Panahi reports that even his closest friends gave up hope that he would ever make films again. "But anyone who knows me knows that I can't change a lightbulb. I can't do anything other than make films." Shortly before the film and travel ban was imposed, he wondered what he would do now. "If cinema is truly what is sacred to you, what gives your life meaning, then no regime, no censorship, no authoritarian system can stop you."

No exile, no escape

Many Iranian filmmakers have already fled into exile, including Panahi's close friend Mohammad Rasoulof , director of the Oscar- nominated film "Seeds of the Sacred Fig Tree," who now lives in Berlin. He has no plans to join them, says Panahi; he couldn't live in any other society. "I had to stay in Paris for three and a half months for post-production and thought I was going to die." In Iran, he says, filmmaking is a communal act of improvisation and trust. "At 2 a.m., I can call a colleague and say, 'This take should be longer.' And he comes to me, and we work all night. In Europe, that doesn't work."

Panahi also intends to return home after his triumph in Cannes. "As soon as my work here is finished, I'll leave," says the director. "And then I'll ask myself: What will my next film be?"

Adapted from English by Stefan Dege.