Director Jafar Panahi, Palme d’Or award winner for the film “Un simple accident” (It Was Just an Accident), reacts, during the closing ceremony of the 78th Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France, May 24, 2025.
REUTERS
CANNES, France (Reuters) — Revenge thriller “It Was Just An Accident” by Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who was barred from filmmaking for 15 years by the government in Tehran, won the Palme d’Or top prize on Saturday.
With the award, Panahi now has the rare honor of winning the top prize at all three major European film festivals, after nabbing Berlin’s Golden Bear for “Taxi” in 2015 and the Golden Lion at Venice for “The Circle” in 2000.
The 64-year-old director, who last attended the festival in person in 2003, addressed his prize to all Iranians, saying the most important thing was Iran and the country’s freedom.
“Hoping that we will reach a day when no one will tell us what to wear or not wear, what to do or not do,” he said, in an apparent reference to Iran’s strict Islamic dress code for women.
The death in 2022 of a young Iranian Kurdish woman in the custody of the morality police for allegedly violating hijab rules sparked Iran’s biggest domestic unrest since the 1979 revolution that brought its clerical rulers to power.
Panahi, who has been imprisoned several times in Iran, plans to return to his country after the festival, he told Reuters.
“Win or not, I was going to go back either way. Don’t be afraid of challenges,” said the director who made films illegally during the 15-year ban that was recently lifted.
Panahi added that he would never forget his first day at this year’s festival, and getting to watch the film with an audience after all those years: “Every moment was thrilling.”
“It Was Just An Accident,” which follows a garage owner who rashly kidnaps a one-legged man who looks like the one who tortured him in prison and then has to decide his fate, is only the second Iranian film to win, after “Taste of Cherry” in 1997.
“Art mobilizes the creative energy of the most precious, most alive part of us. A force that transforms darkness into forgiveness, hope and new life,” said jury president Juliette Binoche when announcing why they chose Panahi for the award.
