The majority of Jafar Panahi‘s movies have been made illegally, under the radar, and in secret away from the eyes of the Iranian government, if not banned in his home country altogether. They’re not exactly meant to be box office smashes. But the international audience Panahi has managed to cultivate over the years has been respectable, consistently showing up both in the U.S. and overseas, even as Panahi’s films have grown more meta and experimental because of the circumstances of how he’s been forced to make them,
His latest film, however, the Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident,” is Panahi’s most narrative-driven feature and most commercial feature in years. And after an impressive opening weekend in just three theaters, U.S. distributor Neon has hopes for it that would eclipse anything Panahi has released in his career.
“It Was Just an Accident” in its opening weekend made $68,021 from just three screens for a per screen average of $22,674. The film actually opened on Wednesday, October 15, so its domestic haul over the 5-day weekend is $115,000, giving it a per screen average of roughly $30,000. Neon did the funkier Wednesday opening in order to accommodate a handful of Q&As with Panahi himself in both New York and Los Angeles.
If you use that metric — and Neon certainly will want to — it just barely outgrossed the platform release of Sony Pictures Classics’ “I’m Still Here,” which thus far had been the biggest international opening of 2025. That film wound up grossing $6.2 million domestic and a total $36.1 million worldwide. And that’s the ballpark “It Was Just an Accident” has the potential to crack. It almost certainly would beat any of Panahi’s former films, the biggest of which was 2015’s “Taxi,” with $3.9 million worldwide.
In terms of Iranian films, Asghar Farhadi’s “The Salesman” in 2016 had a PSA opening of $23,692 and wound up with $2.4 million domestic, and Farhadi’s “A Separation” did similarly with a PSA of about $19,000, and that one wound up with $7 million domestic as it rode its way to an Oscar. The hype around this film has Neon instead comping “It Was Just an Accident” to its other recent Palme d’Or winners that have successfully crossed over from their international audiences, like “Triangle of Sadness” ($4.6 million domestic) and “Anatomy of a Fall” ($5 million domestic), both of which opened higher on more screens and did especially well internationally.
Playing this past weekend in Lincoln Center and the Film Forum in New York and the AMC Century City in Los Angeles, it wasn’t just the Panahi Q&As that did well. The weekend screenings had a steady flow of patrons, drawing young and old and also some Iranian crowds in Los Angeles, all of which portend well as it continues a slow rollout through awards season. That’s significant, as Neon has opened each of its now six straight Palme d’Or winners in this same mid-October time frame, really giving “It Was Just an Accident” a long runway to open wider and do the bulk of its business come January after the film has scooped up some key awards nominations.
The trouble is, especially with platform releases, is that it’s getting harder and harder to predict the marketplace long term. There were two other platform releases this weekend that “It Was Just an Accident” beat, including Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” from MUBI and Richard Linklater’s “Blue Moon” from Sony Pictures Classics. The feeling among sources is that to really pull off a platform release these days, a movie has to either be a unique event (Panahi making his way stateside for the first time in years helps) and has to have phenomenal, universal praise (it has a 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), not to mention some added pedigree like a Palme d’Or, in order to survive. Anything that’s just middling won’t stick.
But “It Was Just an Accident” does feel like a politically timely story, one that combines some suspense, thrills, and revenge with a bit of humor. The film follows a recently freed man who recognizes his torturer from when he was imprisoned, leading him to impulsively kidnap the torturer with the intent to kill him. But the doubt that he could be making a mistake leads him to track down some of the torturer’s other alleged victims to determine just how he should really act and serve justice.
The film works on its own, but Panahi’s own history in prison at the hands of his government have enormous parallels to the film’s plot that make the film itself all the more resonant. It’s the type of narrative Neon has been playing up well and exactly why audiences will keep showing up in theaters in the long run.