It starts as a small inconvenience. A car breaks down. A man waits. Then ‘It Was Just an Accident’ tightens the screws and doesn’t loosen them. Iranian film auteur Jafar Panahi turns the ordinary into a moral trap, where memory lies and justice comes without instructions. The film doesn’t announce itself. It simply makes one uncomfortable and lets that feeling sit.
Vahid, a former political prisoner, is convinced he has found the man who once tortured him. Not by face, but by sound. A limp. A prosthetic leg. That’s enough to tear open wounds that never healed. He abducts the stranger with the intent to kill him, then hesitates. Doubt arrives quickly and refuses to leave. Other ex-prisoners enter the picture, each carrying their own version of the past, none fully reliable. What unfolds isn’t a whodunnit so much as a should-we-do-this-at-all. The film keeps circling uncomfortable questions, carefully avoiding easy answers.
The performances are quiet and restrained. The speeches are not grand, and emotions come out in small moments, shaped by exhaustion and hidden anger. Panahi’s direction is simple and precise. The desert and the van feel both wide and confining, a space that suits characters trapped in their memories. Dark humour appears at odd moments, not to relax the tension, but to show how strange life becomes when morality starts to fall apart. By the end, the film leaves you shaken. There is no clear ending, and that’s why it works. Panahi trusts the audience to sit with the discomfort. It’s quiet, confident, and deeply moving. Nothing here is accidental.