For more than a decade, after the government of Iran deemed his work “propaganda against the system,” the filmmaker Jafar Panahi was banned from making films or leaving the country. He spent some of that time in prison and under house arrest, but he still found ways to produce art—including the 2011 documentary This Is Not a Film, which was recorded in his Tehran apartment and smuggled into the Cannes film festival on a flash drive. The ban has since been lifted; even so, Panahi chose to make his latest film, It Was Just an Accident, in secret, without an official permit. This month, he showed the thriller at the New York Film Festival.
Much of Iran’s clandestine cinema, including some of Panahi’s earlier works, is didactic, focused on valorizing the victims of the regime’s injustices. But It Was Just an Accident turns the camera inward, toward the pugnacious debates that pit Iranians against one another.
Set in contemporary Tehran, It Was Just an Accident tackles a conundrum familiar to dissidents and revolutionaries.
Continue Reading on The Atlantic
This preview shows approximately 15% of the article. Read the full story on the publisher's website to support quality journalism.