Pop Culture Happy Hour - Watch This: It Was Just An Accident

Episode Date: January 21, 2026

The Iranian film It Was Just an Accident enters Oscars season with the wind at its back. It won the top prize at Cannes, a raft of other awards and has landed on a lot of top ten lists. The movie bears out those accolades. Directed by Jafar Panahi, it’s a tense, volatile, often darkly funny movie about what happens when a former political prisoner runs into a man he’s almost convinced is the one who tortured him and other prisoners. Follow Pop Culture Happy Hour on Letterboxd at letterboxd.com/nprpopcultureSee pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

The Iranian film It Was Just an Accident enters Oscar season with the wind at its back, having won the top prize at Cannes. It's also racked up a raft of awards from other film festivals and has landed on a lot of critics' top ten list for 2025. The movie bears out those accolades. It's a tense, volatile and often darkly funny film about the thirst for vengeance and the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness. It's about a former political prisoner who runs into a man he's almost convinced is the one who tortured him and other prisoners. Again, that's almost convinced, which is why he kidnaps the man and drives him around to Ron, hoping that one of his fellow former prisoners will be able to definitively ID him.

I'm Aisha Harris. And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about It Was Just an Accident on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. Joining us today is Vulture TV critic Roxana Haddadi. Hey, Roxanna. Hello. Thank you for having me. Of course. It Was Just an accident stars Vahid Mobaseri, as Vahed, a mechanic who runs into the president. to a man he thinks is his former torturer from his time locked up in an Iranian prison.

He kidnaps the man and sets out to kill him, but the man, played by Ibrahim Azizi, insists he's not the man Vahid thinks he is. And he talks such a good game that Vaheed packs him inside his van and drives around Tehran to show him to other one-time political prisoners, hoping one of them can remove all doubt. The director, Jafar Panihi, has repeatedly been arrested and imprisoned in Iran for speaking out against the regime. His films are banned in the country, and the film was shot secret. As we tape this, he's been sentenced again on propaganda charges. His legal team plans to appeal the ruling. It was just an accident. It's available now on VOD. Aisha, lots to chew on here. I'm going to start with you. What do you think? Yes, so much to chew on here. And this is, I think,

one of my favorite movies of the year, in part because it feels both very of the moment and very timeless and especially understanding Panahi's background and the fact that this slots in very nicely with all of the previous films he's made before, especially in recent years, in terms of how he's trying to wrestle with this idea of justice, vengeance, what that means and the morality of all those things. And, you know, we can talk a little bit about the ending, but I think like the last third of this film really kind of gets very, very, you know, and the story. naughty and very thorny in ways that I loved. I love seeing these characters sort of wrestle with these things and how even as they are having these back and forth, these very big, like, existential

questions, at the same time, the little character moments pop out. We learn about these people. We learn about the relationships to one another. Some of them actually knew each other before they were political prisoners, dated each other. And some, this is something bringing them together. And so I think it's both a great political film, but it's also a very great character study. And I cannot recommend this movie enough. Yeah, absolutely. Roxanna, now you profiled Panahi for Vulture, a piece that I want to send every listener to. It's so good.

Thank you. It will help you get your head around this film and his other films. But, Roxanna, hit me. What did you make of the film? I think it is exceptional. I think it is in terms of crap. fascinating in the way that I think it like really refuses any sort of genre. Like it is absolutely a political thriller.

It is absolutely a character study. It is also hilarious. And I have to say that like I've seen it now probably like a dozen times, but when I saw it at TIF, something that was really interesting to me. So it was like Panahy, his very talented translator and me. And the crowd was just loving it and kept laughing at all of the, these points. And Panahee asked her, Sheda Diani, I think is her name, but he asked her like, why are people laughing so much? Because he intended a certain amount of comedy, but it also just

flies in terms of the way that it is edited to really point out, I think, like the absurdities of a lot of this, like the surreal nature of living in a country where the economic system, because of sanctions and because of a lot of international issues has been so depressed that everyone you meet is asking you for a tip. That's really funny. I think a lot of the character dynamics are really funny. So, like, as Aisha said, it is tackling these huge sort of questions of, like, who owns a country? Is it the regime? Is it the government?

Is it the people who are resisting or the people who have sort of been, like, browbeaten into submission? I think that's probably something a lot of people around the world can relate to in this current moment. So I think it has a lot of large scale relevance. But I also think it is a really fascinating work from someone who has now been imprisoned twice, has spoken quite a lot about the people that he met in prison and became close to. and also really, I think, a portrait of the fact that really at any point, again, this is something that has relevance, I think, for all of us, anyone can become seen as unfriendly to the regime, right? And we see that in like the differences between these characters. They're all united by being political prisoners, but they're all incredibly different in terms of their jobs and their ideologies and their methodologies. So yeah, I really do think that it is. exceptional. And I think it's really interesting that Penah, he went from making, you know, when he was under this filmmaking ban and he was banned from leaving Iran, he was making these

films that were mostly like sort of docu dramas, like he was playing himself in nearly all of them. And so there was sort of this interesting juxtaposition of like reality and unreality. Whereas in this, it's like a pretty straightforward narrative. There's no messing with form. But I also think it really draws you in in a unique way. Yeah. And on top of its political urgency, which you both spoken about so well, I think this film does a good old-fashioned favorite to cinema, huge service to cinema because it digs into something that's been treated so glibly by filmmakers forever, which is the question of vengeance. Hollywood can serve it up to us in a really pulpy way with the death wishes and the dirty Harry's where you watch somebody getting vengeance.

And it's like, yeah. But other times Hollywood does the opposite. approach where the hero is supposed to be a hero, and so you get a lot of hand waving from some other character going, you're a good man, you're not a killer. You can't pull that trigger. And if you do, you're no better than him, which is so boring, and I hate it. Both of those approaches have, of course, calcified into cliche now. And whenever you see them, you're just reminded that you're watching a movie, a kind of movie you've seen a million times. And if the hero lets the bad guy loose, we know what's going to happen. Something bad's going to happen to the villain anyway, because some studio executive says audiences need some cathartic outlet. And it's such a game.

and it's such a setup and it's so fundamentally dishonest and cynical. This film is honest because it sets out to dig under all that calcification, all that cynicism, and just make us sit with the moral question itself. Not a cinematic take on the moral question, but just like the question itself, bare, unflinching, which does a huge service to the film as a film. It keeps us guessing. It shifts our allegiances over the course of the film.

And we have to grapple with the implication of the decision that Faheed's going to make, and we keep wanting him to make different decisions. And it's a fictional film grounded in something very real, as you mentioned, and is happening in a very real sense. And for me, that lends it some of that greater urgency of some of his earlier films, which kind of blended fact and fiction. I mean, did that make a difference to you all in any way? Yeah. I mean, I haven't seen all of his films, but after watching this, I did watch This Is Not a Film and Taxi. And This Is Not a Film was the 2011 film.

film he co-directed where he was filming himself under house arrest while waiting appeals for other sentences he had before the ones he currently has. And then taxi is him sort of playing the role of a taxi driver. It definitely blurs the line between fiction and reality because you can't really tell at first. Like, is this a docudrama? I guess it's a docudrama. That's kind of how they frame it. And like Roxanna said, this is a movie that is pretty straightforward in terms of that's storytelling. And there's a lot of talking and there's a lot of debating. And even with all that debating, again, it doesn't feel like he's just picking things off of a vine, right? He's not just like going like, oh, let me put all of the things that people say on X, whatever social media

platforms. You can see that he's really, really grappling with what I imagine to be his sort of like annoyance, irritation, and all those things that come with being a filmmaker who has to work under these conditions. And I hesitate to map this on to American sensibilities. But I do think there is something about this that sort of crystallized for me that, like, as bad as things have gotten here, we still don't have to have our filmmakers working under cover in the same way. And so this is like, it could be like this and it is like this.

And in other places it could come here. But I think this is what drew me to this film. was the fact that it helped me understand and appreciate just what it took for him to be able to do this. Like, he is a very famous person. Like, if he's filming this in the streets of Iran, and Roxanna, your future really helped me, like, understand how he was able to do this, which is he's just gotten very good at it. He wasn't, he wasn't always good at getting away with it. But just this idea of this being a movie made kind of in secret, I think lends itself a very special nature. I think it's really interesting to go back to the films that he was making in those years

and sort of just look at them from like a technical point of view and be really amazed at like how are these scripts working on various levels where they're simultaneously factual and fictional. So I think all of that is a really fascinating lens with which to view this film because he really like he takes himself out of it and we won't spoil it here, but the ending has this really fascinating, ambiguous nature. And I think that that is such a sign. We've talked about this, like it's sort of timeliness and timelessness.

I think the ending really adds to that. Like, you're going to be trying to work out the film for a while both its politics and what it might be advocating for and also what it might be saying just about like human nature. in general. And I love that the film is playing on like so many different just levels within this like tight two-hour thriller. Yeah, we were talking about the ending before we started recording and I realized that I interpreted in the darkest way possible, which is very me. And there are other avenues to interpret it that I did not avail myself of, but the discussion helped me realize that they're out there, which is always good. Because no matter how you interpret the ending,

what you can't get away from is that this kind of, is that this kind of I can write the hell out of a screenplay, and his characterizations are so clean. It's structured so well because, like, Vahid thinks he remembers this man by the sound of his prosthetic leg, while another former prisoner thinks they remember him by his scent. And still another, by feeling the scars on his leg. So, you know, each sense interacts with memory differently, and that's very, like, in the hands of a lesser filmmaker, that structure would come off as kind of stilted and schematic and clever and constructed. but the film around it is so human and messy and real because it's part of their characters, right?

Each of these characters is reacting to the same stimulus, the presence of this man and the question of who he is, in radically different ways. And we get a sense from that reaction that some of them have the capacity to heal and some of them probably don't. And they're not types exactly, but they're so distinct from one another in how they make their different arguments about what to do that sometimes in the same scene, they feel like they're right and they're wrong and they're everything in between. Because this film is not interested in delivering

a clean take on vengeance that you've seen before. It's interested in implicating us and denying us that simple cathartic reaction. And yet the way it goes about that, even though it's not cinematic in like its narrative, it's very cinematic in its approach. This film sustains the tension that it does from the first frame

by using very, very long takes in very, very cramped quarter. We stay in that van and we don't cut away until you can practically feel yourself clawing at the door. It's really great filmmaking. It's really great writing. And these actors nail it. And that's also, that's like great characterization, right? And I think it's interesting too that, like, obviously we have had a fair number of films made by Iranian filmmakers who make it to the West and are critical of the regime.

And I understand that. Last year we had the seed of the sacred fig by Mohamed Rusulov, who was imprisoned at the same time as Penahee. They are friends. They are collaborators. So I just, I think it's interesting, obviously, that like we are getting these movies that are being released in the U.S. I do think it was just an accident is doing something a little more nuanced and a little more complicated than some of the rest of its peers. Yeah. I think it's also worth news.

There's a very deliberate choice to open the film spending time with the man who they suspect is the one who was their tormentor. Because we spend a decent amount of time with him before we get to the real sort of driver of the plot. And to make that choice to spend that time with him again shows how, you know, Panahi is really trying to sort of show as many different sides and also show how just deeply, ingrained this is. This is like, this is a family man. He has a family. He has a child. It's like, I don't know if this movie works as well if we don't get those first few moments because it really establishes everything that comes after it and the moral wrestling that Vahed and the others have to deal with. That's such a great point. Let's get into this film's Oscar chances, which might sound a little superficial and market-driven, but let's face it. I think listeners to the show know that if this

movie gets a nomination for international feature and or for best director or best screenplay, which I think has a really good shout at, or best picture, all of which are on the table, thousands and thousands of more people are going to seek this film out. It's good to keep in mind that the Oscars aren't just about Hollywood millionaires congratulating themselves. They are largely that, but they can do a lot of good work for a film like this one. So what do you guys think? I think that it is in the mix.

I think that neon, which has a real slate of international film contenders, is doing a lot to promote this, doing a lot to keep Penahee front of mind with people. He has been doing basically like a nonstop nationwide press tour, and I'm okay with it. I'm right with it getting like the parasite treatment and sort of being heralded as this film. that has a lot to say about sort of like our sensorial surveillance moment. So I am good with it. But yeah, it's really interesting.

The degree to which is being supported, I think that's great. I mean, I think it's nice to see that neon is like very committed to this movie. And I'm really curious, like, how it shakes out when we get the Oscar Noms. Yeah. I mean, I think for a movie like this, this is the Oscars at its best, right? it gets those eyeballs on it. I think of the movie last year, the documentary, No Other Land, which was a film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and how that movie, for a very long time, like, you couldn't see it. It was hard to see because it didn't have a distributor. And the Oscars

really helped push it for the filmmakers to be able to get it in theaters more widely than it would have otherwise. And so this is the best that the Oscars can do in terms of like what that means. I'm curious how Panahi actually feels about it, like if he actually cares. Yeah. You know, because at the end of the day, it's not going to materially, most likely change his life in any way. But I do think, like, as a symbol, it is the best version of a symbol is what it can do for a movie like this. Yeah. I mean, what's interesting about the international feature category at the Oscars is that, like, films are nominated. by the countries in which the work was done,

which is why, like, Panahy's films, when they were being made in secret in Iran, were obviously not being put forth by Iran as the international Oscar contender. So this was put forth by France because post-production work was done in France, where Panahe now lives part-time. So it's interesting always also to see sort of the, like,

weird international negotiations and competition that go into the Oscars. So Panahia has also spoken about the fact that like this system is sort of messed up because you have like a lot of refugee filmmakers who their home country that they're criticizing will never put their films forward for Oscars, right? So I think that's also another additional layer that is sort of fascinating here is again like who gets to make a film that represents a country and like what are the weird dynamics that go into that aspect of the Oscars. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, this is such a complicated and wonderful movie that more people need to see, whether that happens because it gets a bunch of nods or maybe because, you know, you listen to this episode and heard smart people like Roxanna and Aisha talk about it. Tell us what you think about it was just an accident.

We're on Facebook and letterboxed. And you know what? People who go to those pages, I've already seen the movie. So tell us what you think the ending means. Tell us for your interpretation of the ending. I will be curious to read that. That brings us to the end of our show, Roxanna Haddina, Aisha Harris. Thank you so much for being here.

Thank you. Thank you, Glenn. This episode was produced by Carly Rubin, Jenae Morris, Kayla Latimore, and Mike Katz have been edited by our showrunner, Jessica Reedy, and Holocamim provides our theme music. Thank you for listening to Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR. I'm Glenn Weldon, and we'll see you all next time.