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Director: Jafar Panahi
Stars: Vahid Mobasseri, Ebrahim Azizi
Distributor: MUBI

“I finally found him.”

The Palme d’Or winner, It Was Just an Accident, featured in a gala screening at this year’s BFI London Film Festival.

After a brief road kill accident, a man (Eghbal, Ebrahim Azizi) driving home with his wife and young daughter in the car, finds himself checking into the nearest garage available. Stumbling into a garage that’s closed, a wholesome mechanic offers to fix their situation, but the garage owner, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), has his qualms…

Vahid recognises Eghbal from a torturous past, but he’s 99% sure it’s him. Deciding to go with his gut instinct, Vahid pursuit of Eghbal is elevated to kidnap, and brief torture. The doubt, however, is eating away at Vahid, so he calls in the reinforcements – former prisoners – as to whether they think Eghbal is their former punisher. Individually and collectively blinded by violence, which fate will Vahid and co. choose?

Given the increasing number of characters involved in the capture and subsequent events, It Was Just an Accident is extraordinarily dialogue heavy. Often to levels beyond comprehension. Within the film’s concept, however, the Eghbal character is – to a degree – the least important. He is hardly seen or heard from. For great periods, he is literally boxed up. The selling point, essentially, is of the dialogue and debate between the captors. The situation that they have all influenced, and developed for better or worse, entails lengthy conversations and statements from the individual characters as this utterly bizarre situation develops.

The further the uncertainty develops and the further that the captors refrain from inflicting punishment, there is an ambiance and feeling that the captors never really wanted to hurt the captive. For what the initial captor does to the captive ultimately comes off as an aggressive knee-jerk reaction. Given the quantity of people who ultimately make up the captors, surely, they could have found out much sooner if the captive really was who they think he is… It Was Just an Accident dares to question and challenge its viewers: How far would you go? Throughout the film, the pendulum swings thoroughly between justice and vengeance, but at what cost?

The beautifully-shot, and wonderfully landscaped, It Was Just an Accident exceeds in avoidance of becoming a gratuitous spectacle. The opportunity is there to exist as a revenge/torture film, instead, writer-director Jafar Panahi opts for the intelligent approach in presenting debate over the situation at large, rather than opting for definitive violence.