Iranian director Jafar Panahi is back with a bang! A decade-long ban on his travel and filmmaking career has not curbed his resilience. His first appearance at Cannes after the ban is nothing short of a powerful comeback. Panahi’s latest creation It Was Just an Accident has showcased a stellar performance at Cannes, and applauded with a ten-minute standing ovation.
Having endured two spells of undue prison sentences, the dissident actor’s work talks about the consequence of societal injustice. The plot deals with a group of wrongfully imprisoned ex-prisoners who seek revenge upon a jailer who had tortured them. The movie is confrontational and thrives on the grey areas of revenge and morality.
In an interview with The Guardian, Panahi mentions how the movie was born out of his experience in prison and mentions the days he was blindfolded and questioned by a jailer. “I would just hang on his voice all that time, fantasising about who this person was from his voice. And I had an intuition that someday this voice would be an aspect of something I’d write or shoot and give a creative life to.” Panahi mentions.
Having been jailed for creating works that subvert the Iranian regime, Panahi continues to shoot movies using covert measures. He talks about the obstacles he faced while filming his recent movie – plain-clothes police officers asking him to turn in the footage, followed by the threat to arrest the crew and shut down the production.
Panahi had always made the news for his quality works that speak the reality. His prominent work, The White Balloon, won the Caméra d’Or in 1995. His last visit to the Cannes prior to his ban was in 2003, where his work Crimson Gold won the Jury Prize.
