Iran was two weeks into its fiercest protests in years when Iranian director Jafar Panahi sat down for an interview.
“As I’m speaking to you now, my mind and heart are there,” Panahi stated by video from Los Angeles on January 8, the place he was selling his newest movie “It Was Just an Accident,” a Tehran-set thriller that may be a fixture on the awards circuit this yr.
“I think what is happening this time is quite different,” Panahi stated. The director would know. For years he has confronted the brunt of Iran’s regime, from a number of arrests and imprisonments to a ban on filmmaking — none of which has stopped him from making movies, nor offering a significant perspective on his nation.
Protests sparked by Iran’s financial disaster have engulfed cities throughout the nation, prompting a brutal authorities response that escalated sharply the day after Jafari spoke to NCS. According to a US-based rights group, at least 2,403 protestors have been killed and over 18,000 arrested.
“As far as I’m concerned, this regime has fallen in any possible aspect that you could imagine,” Panahi stated, talking via a translator. “It has fallen politically, economically, ideologically and even environmentally. It’s fallen apart. What is remaining is only a shell, and we have to see how long it’s going to last.”
“It Was Just an Accident” is a film with one eye on a attainable future. In the movie, an opportunity assembly prompts a former prisoner to kidnap a person he believes was his interrogator. Doubt pushes him to seek the advice of former inmates, all of whom had been laid low with the identical character, and differ on what to do with him. Revenge or forgiveness? The ethical dilemma circling a single man’s destiny acts as a metaphor for a nation.
“What mattered to me was the future and after the regime,” Panahi stated. “Is the cycle of violence going to continue in the future, or are we going to prepare ourselves from now to create a better situation for ourselves?”
“Everything in the film is an excuse or a pretext to get to this question: Is the cycle of violence going to continue, or is it going to end?” he added.
Panahi cited liberated Europe after World War II, and Eastern Europe after the collapse of the USSR, when native Nazi and Soviet collaborators had been made examples of. “I kept thinking whether this is going to happen in my country,” he contemplated, “or if we’re going to be more reasonable,” he stated.
He recalled the second Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison was struck in the course of the twelve day battle between Israel and Iran in June 2025.
A missile hit the ward the place Panahi himself had been imprisoned. “The gates fell and the walls were destroyed, and the prisoners rushed out to save their lives.”
When the ward subsequent door — the place interrogators had been gathered — was additionally hit, the prisoners, “without a moment of hesitation” went “to the bodies that were caught under the rubble, and they started pulling them out.”
“It wasn’t because they had forgiven their interrogators who were now caught under the rubble. It was because their humanistic sense had prevailed,” he stated.
And that, presumably, won’t ever die? I requested.
“Exactly,” he stated. “Because if it dies, humans will die.”
Until not too long ago, an interview with Panahi was inconceivable.
The director was first detained in Iran in 2010, in reference to a movie he made in regards to the disputed 2009 election. He was sentenced to 6 years in jail however was launched on bail after a interval of starvation strike, although his sentence nonetheless banned him from traveling abroad, talking to the media and filmmaking for 20 years.
In 2022, Panahi was ordered to serve the 2010 jail sentence after he was detained whereas enquiring about fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulouf and Mostafa Aleahmad, who had been arrested amid a crackdown on dissent in Iran, per Reuters. He was launched in 2023 after seven months in Evin Prison following another hunger strike.
“It Was Just an Accident,” his first film since his journey and filmmaking ban was lifted, won the Palme d’Or at Cannes last May, making Panahi the one residing director to have gained high prizes on the Venice, Berlin and Cannes movie festivals. It was nominated for 4 Golden Globes and now has the Oscars in sight.
At residence, assaults towards him proceed. Last month, an Iran court docket sentenced Panahi in absentia to 1 yr in jail and a two-year journey ban, accusing him of “creating propaganda against the political system,” the BBC reported. He was overseas selling his movie when the sentence was revealed. Panahi had an enchantment listening to on January 4, however he was nonetheless ready on information from his lawyer, he stated.
“It’s really because of the campaign that I’m still here,” he stated from Los Angeles, referring to awards season, “because everyone is working really hard on it and I’ve made a commitment. It’s not ethical of me to just ruin everyone’s efforts and leave.”
Panahi stated as soon as awards season concludes, he plans to return to Iran.
An creative, self-reflexive director, necessity has compelled Panahi to stretch the boundaries of movie and contort it into new kinds. Following his filmmaking ban, “This is Not a Film” was shot on an iPhone whereas he was below home arrest. In “Taxi,” he drove round Tehran in a cab fitted with sprint cams. And in “No Bears,” Panahi starred as a metafictional director attempting to shoot a film in exile. His guerilla filmography is each an exhilarating exploration of cinema’s elasticity and a necessary doc on crafting private freedoms within the face of oppression.
Many of his movies learn as acts of dissent merely via their creation, however the director describes himself as a “socially-engaged” filmmaker reasonably than a political one, responding to his environment.
“It Was Just an Accident” — his most easy narrative characteristic in a long time — takes a extra confrontational strategy to Iran’s regime than a few of his earlier movies. “I tried not to get carried away or overexcited or emotional,” he stated.
The similar can’t be stated for his characters, a few of whom search revenge. By the top of the movie, the person suspected of being an interrogator is a wretch, pleading to a former prisoner, “I swear I’m just like you.”
I requested Panahi if he had been capable of finding sympathy for people working for the regime.
“Honestly, when a system itself is dysfunctional, individuals who work it are only like pieces of a big machine,” he stated.
“The issue is not me being sympathetic to them or feeling bad for them,” he stated.
Panahi recalled talking with decrease rating jail employees whereas he was inside. “Anytime they found us in a less crowded spot, or when they thought that they’re not being overheard, they would always have some affinity with us political prisoners,” he stated. “They would usually ask us what we think is going to happen, and whether the Islamic Republic is going to fall or not.”
Naturally, “It Was Just an Accident” is unavailable in Iran. The movie’s Oscar marketing campaign is propelled by US distributor Neon and France, which submitted the movie as its entry for finest worldwide characteristic movie as a consequence of a co-production deal.
Given the uncertainty that awaits Panahi after the Academy Awards, it felt misplaced to ask if he had his subsequent movie in thoughts. Instead, I requested, given the tough circumstances below which he operates, is he in a position to show pride from the filmmaking course of as it’s occurring?
Panahi recalled his youthful self, who would scrape collectively pocket cash to see a movie as soon as each one or two weeks in Iran. The similar “chubby” child was invited to behave in an 8mm movie, however he wished to do extra, although the cinematographer wouldn’t let him look via the viewfinder. It lit a hearth below the long run director till he might personal a digicam of his personal. Cinema, he stated, was “sanctified.”
“When you work with so much hardship behind you … the entire joy of the world is in that moment when you are working on cinema. And you have to do it correctly and properly,” he stated.
“When they gave me a 20-year sentence that banned (me) from working, I realized that there was no way I cannot be making films. And the films that I made were all the result of that same passion and love that I had for cinema.”
“I believe that a filmmaker will feel alive when they are able to do what they like,” stated Panahi, “and that is creating.”