“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.
With this award, Panahi now has the top prize at all three major European film festivals, after having got Berlin’s Golden Bear for “Taxi” in 2015 and the Golden Lion at Venice for “The Circle” in 2000.
The 64-year-old director dedicated his prize to all Iranians, saying the most important thing was Iran and the country’s freedom and 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 Mahsa Amini, 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, said he plans to return to his country after the festival, even though he may be arrested.
“It Was Just An Accident,” is a revenge thriller which follows a garage owner who kidnaps a one-legged man who looks like the one who tortured him in prison and then has to decide his fate.
It was just an accident is the second Iranian film to win the Palme D’Or, after “Taste of Cherries” in 1997.
Twenty-two films in total competed for the prize at the 78th Cannes Film Festival, with entries from well-known directors Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson and Ari Aster. The Cannes Film Festival closing ceremony went off without a hitch after the Cannes area was hit by a power outage for several hours.
