Review of It Was Just An Accident / یک تصادف ساده, directed by Jafar Panahi

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

When it comes to blogging, or even watching movies and whatnot, I’ve been in such a weird headspace lately. I started a new job after quite a bit of a spell of not having any besides freelance and contract work, and now that I am actually working, I’m not watching as much as I used.

Part of it is fueled by my newfound YouTube addiction, but part of it just is that I can’t stay awake long enough to get everything I want done. I haven’t even been going to the movies lately to see them in-person because I simply am just tired after I get everything else done.

Call this a regular phase of corporate America and adulting, but I want to find a balance and go back more to the things I love. Sometimes life is simply trying to find a balance between the things that keep you alive, providing food, shelter, and warmth, and the things that you actually want to spend your life enjoying.

It Was Just An Accident is one of those movies that I’ve been meaning to watch for the longest time. Jafar Panahi is a director I am very familiar with, even though I have not seen the extent of his filmography in recent years. I feel like I have to be in a very specific mood to want to watch Iranian movies, especially considering recent events.

It was during the January 2026 protests, when I write this, in Iran that I finally rented this movie and sat down with it. It felt like the right time as the anxiety began to consume me about family members back home in Iran, as well as everyone who had lost their lives in the name of freedom. The people of Iran are still not free when I type this—I hope there’s a day when their calls of azadi, azadi, azadi are answered.

For now, I watch movies like It Was Just An Accident and reminisce. This is a fairly short movie by Iranian standards, so I get through it fairly quickly. Let’s get into the review!

A group of Iranians discover their former government torturer, kidnap him, and then decide what to do with him as a form of revenge.

The movie begins in a car. A man is driving it with his wife in the front seat, and his young daughter in is in the back with them. As they continue driving through the night, he hits and kills a dog on the road, much to his daughter’s despair. His car is damaged in the process, and he is forced to take it in to a mechanic named Vahid.

Vahid is an Azerbaijani Iranian, and when he sees the man’s prosthetic leg, he becomes convinced this guy is actually the one who tortured him in an Iranian prison. The man and his family leave, but the very next day Vahid finds him, stalks the guy, then kidnaps him. He takes him out to the desert and digs a hole to bury him in, and the guy insists that he has no idea what Vahid is talking about.

Vahid calls him Eghbal, or peg leg, which he denies. But as the guy keeps denying Vahid’s claims, he starts to doubt this is the actual Eghbal. He puts him back in the van and visits his buddy Salar, who refuses to look at the guy and identify him. Instead, he tells him to find the photographer Shiva. She’s in the middle of a shoot with soon-to-be-married Ali and Goli, and she refuses at first too.

Eventually, Shiva does take a look at the guy and recognizes his smell. She thinks it’s Eghbal, but she doesn’t know for sure because she was blindfolded during her torture sessions. Goli and Ali, frustrated that Shiva keeps walking away, ask what’s happening. Turns out Goli was tortured by him too and has a visceral reaction to the events going on, but they want to join in and find out.

They decide to seek out Shiva’s ex partner, Hamid, because he might be able to help them. He helps them drug the man in the back and plug his ears, and he identifies him positively as Eghbal. He wants to kill the guy on the spot, but they stop him and say they want to hear him admit to it himself. But then a phone goes off on the guy’s body, and they pick it up for him.

Turns out his wife was pregnant and his daughter is calling freaking out, as her mother is unconscious. Vahid decides to help her out and grabs the pregnant woman and the daughter, taking them to the hospital. She gives birth to a son as the rest of the gang waits in the parking lot, as Vahid and Shiva want to see this through.

Goli, Ali, and Hamid eventually decide to leave, disagreeing with what’s going on. Left alone with the man, Shiva and Vahid drive him to the outskirts and tie him up to a tree. When he wakes up, the demand that he tell them the truth, and he admits eventually that he is Eghbal.

He justifies his actions because of his religious beliefs and the faith he has in the Islamic Republic’s government, which disgusts the duo in front of him. He taunts them by saying killing him would make him a martyr, and Vahid tells him that his wife just had a son, then recall their torture by his hands.

Shiva demands an apology, he then apologizes tearfully. Vahid lets him go and they leave, too. The movie ends with Vahid and his mother prepping his van for his sister, but then a white car appears in the area. He stops as he hears the prosthetic leg moving closer, then moving away.

Overall Thoughts

This is such an interesting movie to watch, especially once the dominoes start falling and we see how so many people in such a small area were tortured by the same man. I think it’s a testament to the experiences many Iranians, when they’re actively defying the people in charge or not, have a lot of the shared memories and emotions when it comes to certain events.

I can see why this movie might not hit at the awards ceremonies though for Westerners. I feel that it’s a very nuanced movie overall, even with the strength of the actors and the script itself. The writing is very good and tight—that ending itself is one I’m going to remember for a while. It was well done.

But I feel like a lot of Americans and Westerners are going to miss the significance of the characters’ experiences, especially if they know nothing about Iran beyond the basic points Western media parrot about the country. There’s a lot of depth to this movie you could easily miss.

Go watch this if you have the chance. This is a delightful film; just do your research if you want to learn more about what it’s depicting!

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