IndieWire:

The filmmaker tells IndieWire that he really wants Iran to submit his "It Was Just an Accident" for the Oscars. Or, better still, for the Academy to change the rules of international feature film eligibility so they don't favor democracies. 

Over the past 15 years, Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi has been imprisoned, blindfolded, interrogated, and put under house arrest with a 20-year ban on making films.

During his imprisonment in 2010, he said he told one of his interrogators, “I make films about whatever I see in my environment. That’s what I get inspired by.” The interrogator said, “But you cannot make a film of anything you see.” Panahi said, “Yes, I can, and I should. It’s not in my control. Topics just come into my work, and it has nothing to do with me. Look, right now you’re interrogating me. This will eventually show up in one of my films.”

Figuring he had received enough punishment, Iran did lift the travel and filmmaking ban in 2023. But Panahi still had to apply to the Ministry of Guidance for approval to make his films. He tried to get approval for a war film, he said, needing machinery and a train, but gave up and returned to making his films clandestinely. (He may make the war film outside the country.)

Panahi is a man who does not take “no” for an answer.

Sure enough, in his new film “It Was Just An Accident,” which was filmed in secret in Iran and won the Palme d’Or at Cannes at this year, Panahi tells the story of a man who brings his broken-down car at night to a garage. From another room, the mechanic hears him dragging his leg and knows deep in his bones that this is the man who tortured him in prison. But he never saw his face. Is this really him? He collects a group of fellow one-time prisoners and they embark on a darkly funny journey to uncover the man’s identity, carting him about in a box in a van and debating the right thing to do.

“When you live with a group of people for seven months in any environment, it doesn’t matter where, it could be outside prison, and then you leave that environment, you cannot forget those people,” said Panahi over coffee at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. “You’ll find any excuse to ask about them and be with them, and you want to do something for them?”

This eventually started bugging the filmmaker. When he visited his mother, he had to cross a a bridge where he could see the prison. “That was always a reminder,” he said. “I was constantly thinking that those guys are inside and I’m out. You start thinking about the past memories. You ask yourself, ‘What was it that I witnessed inside?’ From interrogations to anything else, you start remembering, and you ask yourself, ‘What did that interrogator look like?’ But I never saw the interrogator. I only heard his voice, and I remember this voice, and I asked myself, ‘Will I know him if I see him outside? Will I be able to recognize him?'” 

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