It Was Just an Accident · reception & legacy

2025 · Jafar Panahi

How It Was Just an Accident has been received, argued over, and remembered.

The arc

It arrived already canonised: the 2025 Palme d'Or (from Juliette Binoche's jury) made it the year's consensus masterpiece, and it rode that wave through awards season as France's Oscar pick — landing International Feature and Original Screenplay nominations before losing the former to fellow Cannes darling Sentimental Value.

What's debated

The fight it keeps generating: is this genuinely Panahi's best film, or a mid-tier Panahi canonised for the astonishing story behind it — with the final shot relitigated in every comment section.

Its footprint

Its defining image happened off-screen: Panahi flying home after Cannes and being mobbed by cheering crowds at Tehran airport — a Palme winner returning to the country that had jailed him, and one of the year's most-shared pieces of film-culture footage.

Where it stands

Instant canon: a fixture atop 2025 year-end lists and a Letterboxd favourite, it also completed Panahi's festival triple crown — Palme d'Or, plus Venice's Golden Lion (The Circle) and Berlin's Golden Bear (Taxi), a feat only a handful of directors have managed.

★ Did you know? It was shot entirely in secret in Iran, without government permits, less than two years after Panahi's release from Evin Prison — and its story grew out of conversations he had with fellow inmates there. It also extended distributor Neon's improbable streak to six consecutive Palme d'Or winners (after Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall and Anora).

Named by the director

Influences Jafar Panahi has publicly named — the director's own word, distinct from the inferred lines of influence.

Alfred Hitchcock — In interviews around the film Panahi said he 'learned the alphabet of cinema from Alfred Hitchcock,' whose influence he acknowledged in its suspense mechanics.