Before 2025, Jafar Panahi hadn’t been interviewed since 2010. The 65-year-old Iranian director is behind powerful, often darkly funny dramas like White Balloon, No Bears, and This Is Not a Film. He’s also a political figure who, in 2010, was locked up in Iran’s Evin Prison, where he was released a few months later with a ban on filmmaking, speaking to the press, and leaving the country. Panahi’s crime? He tried shooting a film about life under the Iranian regime.

In 2022, Panahi was imprisoned again when he questioned the arrest of his fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa al-Ahmad. After a widely publicised hunger strike, Panahi was released from Evin Prison in 2023 with a determination to write and direct a film about his latest period of incarceration. Shot in secret in Tehran, It Was Just an Accident went on to win the Palme d’Or at this year’s Cannes.

“We sat through interrogation sessions, blindfolded, in front of a wall, and the sound that we all heard just gradually penetrated us,” Panahi tells me through an interpreter, Sheida Dayani. “Later, when we were in a communal space, we would tell our stories. I heard from people who had been in the prison for 15 years. Afterwards, when I was outside, I was thinking about what I could do for my friends who were still in the prison.”

In Tehran, Vahid (Vahid Mobasseri), a former political prisoner, is a car mechanic who’s disarmed when he hears the entry of a customer, Eghbal (Ebrahim Azizi), whose squeaky walk – he has a prosthetic leg – reminds him of the unseen figure who tortured him. Reacting impulsively, Vahid kidnaps Eghbal, buries him alive, but then pauses: what if this isn’t, as the prisoners nicknamed him, Peg Leg?

Like a morality play, It Was Just an Accident presents multiple perspectives to debate whether violence could ever be justified. Paranoid that he’s kidnapped an innocent man, Vahid drives Eghball (tied up in a van, vehemently denying the allegations) to other formerly blindfolded figures from prison. They all disagree on whether Eghbal should be killed or freed, or if he’s even Peg Leg. While none of them saw their interrogator with their eyes, some insist that Eghbal’s smell, voice and footsteps are instantly recognisable.

“Because people are blindfolded during interrogation sessions, their auditory sense is the strongest, and therefore sound is very important,” says Panahi. “The moving engine of the film has to be the sound.” The thriller’s most nerve-wracking sequence doesn’t involve dialogue or action; it’s simply Vahid hearing, or possibly imagining, the squeaky footsteps of someone approaching him.

“I thought that if we could hear those footsteps in the silence, the more it’s going to capture the minds of the audience,” says Panahi. “We hear it in the first 10 minutes of the film, and then we don’t hear it again until the last two minutes. It had to be a very particular sound.”

We sat through interrogation sessions, blindfolded, in front of a wall, and the sound that we all heard just gradually penetrated us. Later, we would tell our stories. I heard from people who had been in the prison for 15 years

During his filmmaking ban, Panahi directed a number of films that starred himself, including Taxi, 3 Faces, and the wryly titled This Is Not a Film. The accompanying ban on interviews meant that the work spoke for itself: 3 Faces won Best Screenplay at Cannes; Taxi won the Golden Bear at Berlin. It also meant that misconceptions spread and weren’t corrected. Practically every article written about Panahi since 2011 has claimed that This Is Not a Film was smuggled into Cannes via a USB stick hidden in a cake.

“The story with the USB stick in a cake – it’s not true,” says Panahi. “I also read people say I was under house arrest. I was banned from leaving my country, not banned from leaving my home. In Taxi, I drive people around the city, yet people still say I’m under house arrest? I’m making a film in a faraway village by the border, yet people still say I’m under house arrest? It’s really strange, but now I’m desensitised to it.”

The characters of It Was Just an Accident compare their situation (and also a lone palm tree) to Waiting for Godot. The more apt reference might be Ariel Dorfman’s 1990 play Death and the Maiden, which was turned into a 1994 film by Roman Polanski. In Dorfman’s revenge-drama, a former political prisoner believes she’s chanced upon her former interrogator: she recognises his voice, the smell of his breath, and various speech patterns.

However, Panahi dismisses the connection, even though he once planned to make a film of Death and the Maiden. “The main issue for me wasn’t about the interrogator, or what had happened in prison, but what’s going to happen in the future. Death and the Maiden was a post-regime story, but my film happens from inside a regime, and it’s not clear what’s going to happen afterwards.”

He adds, “All dictatorships have similarities, and after this film, perhaps there will be more dictatorships and artworks that resemble this one. It’s all about how people experience it. My film, the play, Polanski’s film – you can’t know what influenced what.”

I ask Panahi if he thinks that one of his interrogators might at some point watch It Was Just an Accident. “One day, I got into an argument with my interrogator. He was talking about my films, such as The Circle and Crimson Gold. I said I’m inspired by what happens in my society, because I’m a socially engaged filmmaker. Certain things happen during the day that may seem insignificant, but they’re what inspire me. I said to him, ‘Now that you’re interrogating me, this might show up in one of my films later on.’ He said, ‘You’re going to make a film about me?’ I said, ‘No, but unconsciously it will make its way into my films.’”

A filmmaker can’t assess their strengths and weaknesses until they see the film with an audience

Picked up by Neon and MUBI for respective US and UK distribution, It Was Just an Accident is in the midst of an awards push. Selected by France as its Oscar submission, it’s practically guaranteed at least one trophy. Panahi is thus on an unlikely press tour. In 2022, the Supreme Court lifted his various bans, and the director has spent the second half of 2025 travelling around the world.

When Panahi attended Cannes in May, it was his first time seeing one of his films with a crowd in nearly two decades. “A filmmaker can’t assess their strengths and weaknesses until they see the film with an audience,” he says. “In Q&As, people bring up things that were not on my mind at all, and there are things people interpret differently.”

Like what? “For instance, the scene at the hospital. I saw people laughing. My friend said it’s because they were going to kill a person, and now they’re taking his family to the hospital. That’s when I realised that cultural differences will lead to discrepancies. If this film is screened in Iran, no one is going to laugh at that scene, because it’s a humanistic act that needs to happen.”

It Was Just an Accident is out in UK cinemas on December 5