As our own Anne Thompson told it best in her recent profile of “It Was Just an Accident” filmmaker and beloved Iranian auteur Jafar Panahi: “Over the past 15 years, [he] has been imprisoned, blindfolded, interrogated, and put under house arrest with a 20-year ban on making films” by his native country.
Next up for Panahi and his continued troubles with government bodies? Having to miss the New York Film Festival premiere of his latest film due to the United States’ own government shutdown.
Variety reports that Panahi missed last night’s screening of his Palme d’Or winner at NYFF, and the festival has also canceled a planned live chat today between Panahi and Martin Scorsese. The outlet reports that Panahi’s trip was stymied because “his visa could not be processed in time” and “the culprit is the government shutdown, which kicked off on September 30 after congressional leaders failed to reach a funding deal.”
Panahi’s latest is his first feature since he was incarcerated for several months in 2023 for criticizing the Iranian government. As he has often been forced to do in recent years, Panahi shot the film in secret. The film was inspired by his own experiences in prison.
As David Ehrlich wrote in his review of the film, “In his first project since the regime ostensibly lifted their restrictions on his art, Panahi draws from [his own] different prison experiences for a raw and blistering moral thriller about a hard-working Azeri man whose most tormented memories come rushing to the surface when he hears someone walk into his place of business with the same haunting squeak of his former torturer’s prosthetic right leg. Played by Vahid Mobasser, a TV station programmer and part-time cab driver, Vahid impulsively abducts the man (Ebrahim Azizi, the only professional actor in this extraordinary cast), drags him into the middle of the desert, and digs a hole big enough to bury his pain alive.”
The film was a smash hit when it premiered at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Palme d’Or. In recent weeks, it was selected as France’s entry for the Academy Awards. Neon will release “It Was Just an Accident” in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 15, with a national rollout to follow.