Filmmaker Jafar Panahi on 'It Was Just an Accident' and challenging the Iranian government

Amna Nawaz:

In this morning's Oscars announcement, the movie "It Was Just an Accident" made by acclaimed Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was nominated for best foreign film and best original screenplay.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown recently met with the director to talk about his work, his country in distress, and the work of what he calls a social filmmaker.

It's for our Art in Action series, exploring the intersection of art and democracy, as part of our Canvas coverage.

Jeffrey Brown:

The sound of a prosthetic leg dragging across a floor, terrifying to a mechanic named Vahid, who, blindfolded as a political prisoner, was tortured by a man he knew only from his voice and this very sound.

Vahid kidnaps the man and then he and a group of others who suffered the same horror and are now trying to pick up the pieces of their lives are forced to wonder, is this in fact their torturer? And, if so, what now?

For Jafar Panahi, the director of "It Was Just an Accident," the story is personal, partly based on his own experience in prison.

Jafar Panahi, Director (through interpreter):

When I was being interrogated, I always had a blindfold on my eyes and I was facing a wall with a piece of paper in my hand. Someone would ask me questions and I would answer on the paper. I didn't know who was behind me.

I only heard his voice or his movements when he was walking. And I always wanted to know who he was, know what he looks like. And if I saw him outside of here, would I recognize him or not?

Jeffrey Brown:

Panahi, 65, is a celebrated figure in world cinema, winner of top awards at major film festivals, his films renowned for capturing the humanity of life in Iran, even amid the ruling Islamic Republic's authoritarian stifling of daily existence and violent crackdowns on descent.

But he has also paid a price. In 2010, he was sentenced to six years in prison for propaganda against the state. He undertook a hunger strike and, amid an international outcry, was released after three months, but not allowed to travel. Film festivals honored him with an empty chair on stage.

In 2022, he was arrested again and served seven months in Tehran's notorious Evin prison. Upon his release, he vowed not to forget those still held.

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

Some of them had not seen the outside world for five or six years. They shared their pain and suffering. They talked to you. They ate with you. They walked in the yard with you. All these things come together so that, when you leave prison, you feel like there is a weight on your shoulders.

Jeffrey Brown:

One result, a new film, a different kind of vengeance thriller, one that often sprinkles in bits of humor, as when his characters constantly bickering, one in bridal gown for her wedding photos, have to push their van through Tehran traffic.

For Panahi, the real question isn't retribution, but how a society ever moves beyond the cycle of violence.

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

History has shown that these kinds of governments can't survive. One day it will end. One day it will stop. It will collapse.

In the film, all these people in our conversations with their emotional standpoints, they want to release it in some way. All of this is just to make the viewer think, what's going to happen? The same conditions? The same anger? Same conflict? Same violence? Same harsh treatments? Is it supposed to continue? Or, no, it must stop one day?

Jeffrey Brown:

You have said that you're not a political filmmaker, but a social filmmaker. What does that mean?

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

Social filmmaking is a filmmaking that takes the subjects of its films, its ideas and what's in its past into consideration. And it never categorizes the characters into the good people and the bad people, contrary to political films.

That is why I say I make social films, but it may be a political subject.

Jeffrey Brown:

He's also an endlessly creative filmmaker, often out of necessity. When he was punished with a 20-year ban on filmmaking, he responded with "This Is Not a Film," a kind of home movie shot on an iPhone. It was shown the world over.

So, "This Is Not a Film," but it is a film. It's almost a kind of joke, but a very serious one.

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

Yes, because they give an order that was more of a joke. What does it mean when you tell a filmmaker, you can't make a film for 20 years? That's when you say, no, you can't stop the filmmaker from making movies. He finds a way. He makes a film. You say, stop making films. So I will say this is not a film at all.

Jeffrey Brown:

That ban was eventually lifted, but Panahi still refuses to submit his scripts to government censors. He shot "It Was Just an Accident" in secret, made nightly backups of digital material, and protected his actors, many of them nonprofessional, by limiting their knowledge of the full story.

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

But when you were in those circumstances, the type of filmmaking, working underground, that's what it looks like. That's the norm.

Jeffrey Brown:

Do you believe that an artist -- do you believe that you as an artist, have some responsibility to use your art, your filmmaking, to address the social conditions in the country?

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

Whether I have a duty or not, I don't look at it as a duty. Rather, I feel that, in these conditions, I must speak up. I must make this film. Even if my films are not being shown, at the end of the day, I prepared a new set of conditions for history, for the future, for the time when the conditions are suitable for these films to be seen, these films to be seen.

Jeffrey Brown:

As Panahi's film racks up acclaim and awards, his country is again in turmoil, with demonstrations in the streets and deadly responses from the regime. And Panahi himself faces an uncertain future, a new one-year prison sentence handed down while he was out of the country for so-called propaganda activities related to his work.

I know you're appealing, but you have also said publicly that you will return to Iran. Why?

Jafar Panahi (through interpreter):

I don't understand this question at all. When you know that what you do has a price and you have to pay it, and when you see people in prison who have been imprisoned over and over again, but they stand on their beliefs, well, why don't you as a filmmaker do the same?

Jeffrey Brown:

And, he adds, Iran is the place he knows, its language and culture, the small details of its life and big questions of its future.

For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Jeffrey Brown in New York.