In Jafar Panahi’s acclaimed thriller “It Was Just an Accident,” it’s a definite sound that alerts Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a mechanic, that the person who tortured him in jail could be dangerously shut.
After listening to it, he embarks on a rage-fueled mission to kidnap and kill the interrogator. However Vahid is just not sure he has the precise man, so he enlists a gaggle of different victims to assist establish him. What ensues is a brilliantly taut ensemble piece.
The newest from the Iranian grasp earned the Palme d’Or on the Cannes Movie Competition and is now a significant contender this awards season, representing France on the Oscars within the worldwide characteristic class. Iran wouldn’t submit the politically charged movie.
“Because the auditory sense of prisoners is usually strongest above all the other senses, I thought that I would begin the film with a sound,” a stoic Panahi says by way of an interpreter in a resort room in Santa Monica. “In prison, you keep trying to guess if this voice that you hear belongs to an older person, a younger person, what he looks like and what he does in life.”
A scene from “It Was Just an Accident.”
(Neon)
Panahi isn’t any stranger to being disadvantaged of his freedom. Arrested in 2022 for his outspokenness towards the regime’s practices, he spent seven months in jail. It wasn’t till he went on a starvation strike that his proper to authorized illustration was granted.
With out an legal professional current, Panahi explains, interrogators blindfold detainees and stand behind them, both asking questions immediately or writing them on a chunk of paper and handing it to the detained, who lifts their blindfold simply sufficient to learn it. An interrogation almost an identical to that description performs out in final yr’s Oscar-nominated movie “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” by Mohammad Rasoulof, one in all Panahi’s longtime collaborators.
“I had not actually seen Rasoulof’s film because when we make films clandestinely, we don’t talk about them, even with our close friends,” he explains. “I didn’t even know what his film was about. Only when I got to France to mix [‘It Was Just an Accident’], and Rasoulof’s film was out in theaters there, that’s when I saw it.”
Making movies on the outskirts of legality underneath an authoritarian regime entails high-stakes discretion. The script for “It Was Just an Accident” by no means left Panahi’s sight when casting.
“To all of the actors, I gave the script in my own apartment,” he remembers. “I told them, ‘Read it here, don’t take it with you. Go and think about it for 24 hours, and then tell me whether you want to be a part of it.’” Everybody within the stellar solid, composed of dissident artists with various levels of expertise in entrance of the digicam, was conscious of the dangers it entailed.
Jafar Panahi.
(Kate Dockeray / For The Occasions)
Mobasseri had appeared in Panahi’s earlier effort, “No Bears,” whereas Majid Panahi, who performs a groom swept up within the scheme by his vengeful bride, is the director’s nephew. Mariam Afshari, as a photographer who additionally joins the plot, had minimal appearing expertise, however had been concerned in different productions in below-the-line roles. Panahi says he casts actors primarily based on how their bodily traits resemble the character he has in thoughts.
That was the case with the tall and lean Ebrahim Azizi, who seems as Eghbal, the person the group believes was their ruthless captor. For a scene close to the tip the place Eghbal breaks down, considering he’s about to be killed, Panahi positioned his belief in Azizi — who solely acts in underground movies, not state-approved tasks — to convey the tempestuous humanity of a presumed villain.
“I felt a huge burden on my shoulders when I left prison that made me feel I owed something to my fellow prisoners who were left behind,” Panahi says. “I said this to Ebrahim Azizi, ‘Now the entire burden of this film is on your shoulders with your acting, and you have to put that burden down with utmost commitment.’”
The primary time Panahi shot that searing scene, he sensed it wasn’t coming collectively. In spite of everything, his solely expertise with real-life interrogators was from the receiving finish of their questioning. “I went to one of my friends, Mehdi Mahmoudian, who has spent one-fourth of his life in prison,” he says. “I told him, ‘Because you know these personality types very well, come and tell this actor what to do.’ He guided [Azizi] and we took two or three more takes and it was done.”
Amid the hard-hitting ethical drama of “It Was Just an Accident,” moments that warrant a chuckle for his or her reasonable absurdity would possibly shock some viewers. Nevertheless, a contact of sardonic levity has all the time been a part of Panahi’s storytelling.
“Humor just flows through life. You cannot stop it,” he says.
To make his level, Panahi remembers a morbid reminiscence from when he was round 10 years outdated. One in every of his mates had misplaced his father. Disturbed, the boy threatened to take his personal life. Panahi and his different mates adopted him to attempt to cease him if he did the truth is try to harm himself.
Decided, the boy introduced he would stand in the midst of the street and throw himself in entrance of a giant car. “We were lucky because we were in a very isolated part of town and there were no real big cars passing by,” he says. “Two hours later we were all sitting in a movie theater. Humor is always there. It’s not really in my hands.”
