The first rule when it comes to editing a provocative film in a police state? Be careful. Be very, very careful.
After all, Iranian writer-director Jafar Panahi was imprisoned twice, most recently in 2022, for making unauthorized movies. Undeterred, he drew inspiration from his nearly seven months of incarceration at Iran’s notorious Evin Prison to craft Palme d’Or winner “It Was Just an Accident” (opening Friday). Frequent collaborator Amir Etminan edited the thriller, which was shot without permits, and mainly on the streets of Tehran.
“When Mr. Jafar invited people to be part of this project, several times he emphasized, in effect, ‘Maybe this will be the dungeons for you,’” Etminan told IndieWire. “We were all very conscious about the risks we were taking.”
Speaking through an interpreter from his current home in Istanbul, Etminan talked about the security precautions that enabled the filmmakers to make “It Was Just an Accident” undetected by Iran’s autocratic regime. For starters, Etminan and his colleagues were not allowed to read the full script in advance.
“Jafar explained the general idea, but there was no detail because even sharing that much of the story with us [would be dangerous],” Etminan said. “In Iran, even the idea is a crime.” Cast and crew members received a single section of the script daily on a need-to-know basis.
Etminan’s editing routine also deviated from his standard practice. “I did not have an assistant or a DIT [digital imaging technician] person who would bring me the footage,” he said. “And normally, you’d receive the footage and then edit it in your studio. There were none of those things.”
Instead, Etminan set up shop in an apartment he shared with two “Accident” team members and a make-up room. In this safe house, Etminan went through dailies on a 2020 MacBook Air hooked up to a widescreen TV. Going through about two terabytes of RED Komodo footage after each day’s production, he’d funnel the material into lightweight proxy files stored on a tiny solid-state drive. “I’d start to do a rough cut of what we’d just shot, and I also made two copies of the footage. I gave the original shots to Mr. Panahi on hard drives, and he’d hide each of them in different places in the city.”
Etminan did not activate wifi to access the internet because doing so might attract unwanted attention from the authorities. “I use Adobe Premiere Pro in my editing work, but you can’t use that software in Iran because it’s not Iranian IP,” he said. “So in Turkey, before I came to Iran, I updated all my Adobe software and never connected [to wifi] in Tehran.
Along with his nighttime editing sessions, Etminan, who previously cut Panahi’s 2022 Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize winner “No Bears,” showed up every morning on set to serve as script supervisor. He often worked 18-hour days. Didn’t he get tired? “No, I wasn’t tired because I was energized by everything, really. The story, the team, every single detail was very exciting for me.” Etminan said. “Jafar would offer cigarettes or tell me, ‘If you need to sleep, go ahead.’ But I’d always say, ‘I want to go to work!’ It was pure adrenaline.”
Once filmmakers completed the 28-day shoot, a rough cut was smuggled out of Iran. Etminan said, “We chose the shots to use in the film and copied it to this very small device, smaller than a credit card. Then, we gave it to someone who has nothing to do with cinema, and he took it to France.”
But Etminan himself still had to make it out of the country in one piece. At the airport, he said, “I was very stressed, thinking maybe they would arrest me. But since the hard drive wasn’t on me, I made it through. And so, I am still alive.”
Looking back on the making of “It Was Just an Accident” from the relative safety of Istanbul, where he’s lived for four years, Etminan cited one sequence that packed a particularly powerful punch. The story follows mechanic Vahir (MobasseriVahir), who kidnaps a family man (Ebrahim Azizi) he believes tortured him in prison years earlier. Vahir reunites with other ex-prisoners, and together they drive “Pegleg” to the desert for a final reckoning.
“When they bring the guy to the desert at night and tie him around a tree and the woman Shiva [Mariam Afshari] talks to him — that was very emotional for me because it reflected all the pain, all the suffering she lived through during the protests,” Etminan said. “When people have been through that kind of conflict in a country for so many years, I just felt very much connected. The actress cried, deeply. And me also, I cried. Because this was real dialogue based on real events.”
Building on the rapport under duress established with Panahi over the years, Etminan said he looks forward to more collaborations with the auteur. “What I love about Jafar’s work is that he never tries to impress the audience. He’s not interested in exaggerating the acting or the beauty of a shot,” Etminan said. “He goes to the root of every subject and tells the story in the most simple, basic way.”
Etminan believes he’s absorbed Panahi’s aesthetic to the point where editing his work has become second nature. “Mr. Panahi has his own signature, so one reason I think he keeps working with me is that I’ve learned his language,” Etminan explained. “When he brings a new project to my editing table, I understand the story he’s going to tell and how he’s going to tell it.”
“It Was Just an Accident” is now in select theaters from Neon.