The backstory of It Was Just an Accident (Yek tasadof-e sadeh) is so dramatic that it almost obscures the fact that the film itself is fascinating.
Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri) owns a car repair shop. A driver (Ebrahim Azizi) comes in, having damaged his car when he hit a dog. When Vahid hears his voice and the sound of him limping with a prosthetic leg, Vahid suspects that the man is Eghbal, an intelligence officer who tortured him in prison years earlier. Vahid follows him, hits him with his own car and stuffs him into his trunk. Vahid decides to drive into the desert and bury Eghbal alive. Eghbal pleads with Vahid, claiming he is an innocent man who had nothing to do with torturing political prisoners. Unsure, Vahid decides to track down other victims of “Peg Leg” and see if they can confirm it really is Eghbal.
The first such person he finds is Shiva (Mariam Afshari), who is now a photographer. She happens to be taking wedding photographs for a couple, one of whom, Goli (Hadis Pakbaten), was also a prisoner who was tortured.
Together, Vahid, Shiva and the wedding couple find Hamid (Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr), another torture victim.
What makes It Was Just an Accident so interesting is the way each of the torture victims deals with the moral dilemma of what to do with Eghbal, assuming it really is him. Hamid wants to kill him immediately and is outraged when the others hesitate. The others are torn between torturing him themselves or just letting him go because they don’t want to stoop to his level.
And the backstory. Writer-director Jafar Panahi was himself imprisoned in Iran for his political views. In 2010, he was sentenced to six years in prison, but, after an international outcry, he was released after three months. In 2022, he was arrested again and spent seven months in prison. He shot It Was Just an Accident in secret. He completed the film outside Iran, which is why the film is representing France at the Academy Awards. Panahi was also nominated for the Best Original Screenplay Oscar.
Lost in all the attention given to It Was Just an Accident, is that the official entry from Iran, Cause of Death: Unknown, was also banned by the Iranian government and includes a character who is trying to flee Iran because he is a political dissident.
