Directed By:Jafar Panahi
Written By:Jafar Panahi, Nader Saeivar, Shadmehr Rastin, Mehdi Mahmoudian
It Was Just an Accident
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
91
User score
Generally Favorable
7.6
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Top Cast
Metascore
Universal Acclaim
95% Positive
39 Reviews
39 Reviews
5% Mixed
2 Reviews
2 Reviews
0% Negative
0 Reviews
0 Reviews
Dec 5, 2025
100
It’s a film of overwhelmingly visceral emotion; impossible, then, to separate from what we imagine Panahi must feel himself. And yet, so often, we’ll see characters clamber over each other and wheel around their limbs like they’re in a Buster Keaton comedy.
Oct 20, 2025
100
It Was Just an Accident plays like an ideal melding of the filmmaker Panahi was and the filmmaker he’s been forced to become. It’s an endlessly fascinating and extraordinarily powerful work.
User score
Generally Favorable
79% Positive
87 Ratings
87 Ratings
16% Mixed
18 Ratings
18 Ratings
5% Negative
5 Ratings
5 Ratings
Dec 9, 2025
10
"God put him on the road for some reason," says Eghbal's wife when, during the opening scene of ‘It Was Just an Accident,’ the family runs over a dog. From this line, which refers to an almost divine coincidence, one of the fundamental films of the year builds its stellar narrative. Jafar Panahi, acclaimed director and winner of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and recently sentenced to prison in his country, secretly filmed a seemingly simple but powerful story about the trauma and the impossibility of escaping from it. In it, the Iranian director reflects on the consequences of the “Eye for an eye” law and the endless cycle of violence that condemns humanity to its moral destruction. Visceral, relevant, and even with an unexpected touch of comedy in the form of irony and absurdities, the film instantly emerges as a key piece of contemporary Iranian cinema and as another x-ray of the social dynamics of a besieged society on all fronts.
Oct 17, 2025
10
"It Was Just an Accident" is a nail-biting thriller and a messy moral drama, rife with tensions between people dealing with justice and vengeance, healing and suffering, and reality and fantasy. Jafar Panahi welds a scorching social critique to a masterful command of form: a devastating cry for justice while also serving as a superb thriller. It is a towering achievement. "It Was Just an Accident" is a film that asks how do we move forward from past atrocities that have been committed on to others, it grapples with themes of forgiveness and revenge and it intelligently examines all these different paths that one can go down in a way that leads hopefully to a better future for all where we realize that there is reconciliation and that there is a path toward redemption even if that path is hard to walk and even if it hangs over you and you're never really fully certain if you've achieved your goal.
May 22, 2025
100
This is a film about anger, felt as deeply by the characters whose lives unspool in front of the camera as by the filmmaker who sits behind it. Such anger is a long river that bifurcates into two opposing forces: violence and empathy.
Oct 17, 2025
90
If It Was Just an Accident lacks the conceptual audacity of Panahi’s This Is Not a Film or 2022’s No Bears, the film’s straightforward narrative proves to be just another feint, disguising the writer-director’s anger and sorrow at his own mistreatment and that of so many Iranians
Oct 2, 2025
88
Panahi is keenly aware of his limitations — both governmental and budgetary — and has crafted a taut, intimate and blood-pumping story around them. Talk about great art being born out of impossible circumstances.
May 22, 2025
80
It Was Just an Accident is a taut and twisting revenge thriller loaded with heavyweight ethical quandaries. It is heartbreakingly explicit about what the well-drawn characters have suffered, but it asks whether they can ever be justified in using the same methods – abduction, torture – as their oppressors.
Oct 16, 2025
60
In many of Panahi’s past films, along with many Iranian artists working within the confines of a brutal regime, his cinema has been coded and metaphorical (though clearly not enough to avoid extreme censure). But this time, there’s no doubt with this explicit critique, which utilizes a familiar narrative formula but has the potency of a poison pen letter aimed to slash through the debilitating censorship demanded of auteurs expected to exist as prisms of propaganda.
Jan 12, 2026
9
Whatever Jafar Panahi is criticizing here feels like a perfect blend of political intent and cinematic craft, the story flows effortlessly, carried by strong performances by all the cast, great pacing, and precise filmmaking, the political message is sharp and intriguing, delivered through quite a satire way that's surprisingly fun to watch, even though the film remains tense throughout, it just works so well. At 104 minutes, the runtime flies by, one of the things i like the most about this film is how well it handles its buildup, it only takes about the first 15 minutes to set everything up, and then it goes straight into the main conflict, some films need a longer buildup, but only if it's done well, doesn't drag, and simply felt enough, in this case, the short buildup works perfectly. I do really like the straightforwardness of both its story and its characters, we basically learn the context, the situation, and the characters during their introduction, along with how they connect to the central conflict and throughout the journey, it was very fascinating, overall, It Was Just an Accident is an engaging and enjoyable experience, a politically driven dark comedy with strong performances that keeps you interested from start to finish.
Feb 1, 2026
6
This film provides an honest look at life in Iran as former prisoners of the regime contemplate vengeance against someone who may or may not be someone who tormented them. It's well acted and feels a lot like a stage play.
Oct 26, 2025
6
Cathartic more than cinematic. Important more than good.
(Palme d'Or Winner 2025)
Dec 16, 2025
3
The story and dialogue are so performative that they might or might not work on stage. In the medium of film it is impossible to find anything recognizable as humanness in the caricatures Panahi mistakes for characters.
Dec 6, 2025
2
The movie is a simple one in Iran and you can find the elements that are in awful tv shows in this movies like you can't see a good act or even a good angle for the camera.
The first scene was a simple copy from his son's movie, but in this one the scene is so awful and unacceptable.
The dialogue in original language so awful and so basic and at first even you will think that the script is written by Chat gpt and when you continue it, it becomes even worse.
The things in the movie doesn't have any logic in real life and in the movie, the combination of no logic and no good script and no acting make this drama movie to a comedy movie.
The movie want to show the pain and the tragedy and help people but the whole process is a funny comic and it mock the pain in society.
By the way and except this movie, you can find much better movies in Iran and they are more valuable and the have the worth to watch them.
Production Company:
- Jafar Panahi Film Productions
- Les Films Pelléas
- Bidibul Productions
- Pio & Co
- Arte France Cinéma
- L'Aide aux cinémas du monde
- Centre national du cinéma et de l'image animée (CNC)
- Institut français
- Luxembourg Film Fund
Release Date:Oct 15, 2025
Duration:1 h 41 m
Rating:PG-13
Awards
Golden Globes, USA
• 4 Nominations
Academy Awards, USA
• 2 Nominations
New York Film Critics, Online
• 3 Wins & 6 Nominations
