Cannes 2025: Jafar Panahi returns after twenty years, receives 10-minute standing ovation for ‘It Was Simply an Accident’

Delnaz Najafi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Solmaz Panahi, Jafar Panahi, Tahereh Saeedi, Maryam Afsharimovahed, Ebrahim Azizi and Vahid Mobasseri depart the ‘It Was Simply an Accident’ pink carpet on the 78th annual Cannes Movie Pageant at Palais des Festivals
| Picture Credit score: Getty Pictures

Jafar Panahi’s It Was Simply an Accident premiered to a 10-minute standing ovation on the Cannes Movie Pageant, marking a robust return for the acclaimed Iranian filmmaker. The screening, a part of the primary Competitors lineup, was Panahi’s first in-person look at Cannes since 2003.

The movie, described briefly as a narrative the place “a minor accident units in movement a sequence of escalating penalties,” facilities on working-class characters searching for retribution towards a jail guard who as soon as abused them. Although fictional, the movie attracts from the social and political realities Panahi has lengthy explored, typically at nice private price.

Panahi, recognized for The White Balloon, The Circle, and Taxi, has confronted years of authorized restrictions below Iran’s authoritarian authorities. Since his preliminary arrest in 2009, he has been subjected to a number of detentions, a 20-year filmmaking ban, and restrictions on journey and speech. Regardless of this, Panahi has continued to supply internationally acknowledged movies, many made in secret.

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It Was Simply an Accident was filmed below related stress. Within the movie’s manufacturing notes, Panahi revealed that plainclothes officers tried to grab the footage mid-shoot. “They continued to place stress on us by threatening to arrest the crew and shut down manufacturing,” he wrote. The crew paused briefly, then resumed filming.

Although formally free to work once more, Panahi acknowledged, “In apply, I stay on the margins. … I’ve no selection however to maintain working exterior the system.”

The director’s return to Cannes is each a private and political milestone. Whereas lots of his friends have left Iran, Panahi stays. “I can’t dwell wherever else,” he stated. “This movie needed to be made. I made it, and I’ll settle for no matter penalties might comply with.”