IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT REVIEW

it was just an accident, 2025.

i think this is a film that’s much easier to empathize with if you live in the middle east. in a rotten system, you either go along with it and accept becoming part of it’s pawn, even someone with blood on their hands or you resist it and try to follow the path of justice, making your life a thousand times harder. In a blind system where justice doesn’t exist, everyone tries to create their own version of justice. and that’s exactly what we see in the film. one of the simplest examples of people submitting to a corrupt system is the security guards walking around with POS devices in their pockets. in a system where everyone tries to dominate those weaker than themselves, we can clearly see how the people at the top get exactly what they want. everyone is busy crushing someone below them, but they don’t care how the system will eventually discard them once it’s done using them. even those who resist the system lose themselves when it comes to the desire for revenge we see how easily that consumes them. the film shows that even if someone is right, even if they refuse to submit, once they gain power, it can still poison them no matter what. but in the end, we see that nothing can replace compassion. i really loved the ending.

despite how difficult it is to make films in iran, it’s truly admirable that jafar panahi was able to create something like this. being accused by the iranian government of making anti-regime propaganda, being banned from writing scripts, traveling abroad, and giving interviews and still continuing to make films secretly while under house arrest clearly shows his love, respect, and passion for cinema. i have huge respect for him.

continuing to oppose the regime no matter what is what gives films like this their depth, in my opinion. it’s like how his son had to tell the authorities that hit the road was a love story just to be able to make it. that’s exactly how this system works: “the only way to escape this system is to be as two-faced as they are.”

“there was no such thing as entertainment in the neighborhood I grew up in. our only source of fun was pooling our pocket money and skipping school once a week to go to the cinema. my father was a building painter, and we were a working-class family. he used to tell me one thing over and over: ‘bow to no one but god.’ i couldn’t find god in the sky. i found god in cinema.”

— jafar panahi