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Normal Tickets
8:30pm - Friday, Dec 5, 2025
It Was Just An Accident
Acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi's IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT seems to mine much of its inspiration from his own life as a noted political dissident, with its plot centered on a former political prisoner who believes he has found his torturer. The film follows Vahed, an unassuming Azerbaijani mechanic and former prisoner who has a chance encounter with Eghbal, an Iranian man he strongly suspects to be his sadistic jailhouse captor on account of his wooden leg. Vahed gathers other ex-prisoners, including a photographer and a couple on their wedding day, to confirm Eghbal's identity and decide if and how how to seek revenge.
The narrative explores themes of trauma, the morality of revenge, and how different people cope with systemic abuse, often using a blend of thriller, road comedy, dark social satire, and moral debate. At its core, Panahi's latest is a deeply felt moral thriller, where high stakes tension combines with unexpected flurries of humor and thoughtful, sometimes devastating questions regarding persecution and revenge. With Vahid Mobasseri, Mariam Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi, Hadis Pakbaten, Majid Panahi, Mohamad Ali Elyasmehr.
Cannes Film Festival Winner - Palme d'Or
"'It Was Just an Accident' plays like an ideal melding of the filmmaker Panahi was and the filmmaker he’s been forced to become. It’s an endlessly fascinating and extraordinarily powerful work." (New York Magazine / VULTURE)
"The first film Panahi made after his 2022 arrest, the most recent of his many conflicts with the Iranian government, 'It Was Just an Accident' is both typically uncompromising and, for long stretches, disarmingly funny." (The Reveal)
"Bursting with humanity and dark humor, it’s a sharply well-acted, written and directed modern thriller that grapples with urgently existential questions of justice, violence and resistance." (Seattle Times)
"If anyone has the right to make a revenge fantasy, it’s Jafar Panahi. And yet, this movie isn’t that. Panahi doesn’t make statement films; he makes question films, designed to instigate soul-searching and debate." (Washington Post)
"Panahi reaches some kind of terrible career high. This is a movie born out of a lifetime that no one should have been forced to endure. And yet, the film world is stronger for the suffering." (Globe and Mail)
Friday, December 5
Doors 8:00 pm | Movie 8:30 pm *Start time subject to change. Please arrive on time.
IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT "Yek tasadef sadeh" (Jafar Panahi, 2025 / PG / 102 mins / Farsi w.EST) In Iran, a man bumps into the man he believes to be his former torturer. However, faced with this person who fiercely denies having been his tormentor, doubt sets in.
