Cannes Film Festival 2025: "A Simple Accident," Jafar Panahi's moving film about the conditions of "political" prisoners in Iran, wins the Palme d'Or

Panahi's latest film ticked all the boxes for a Palme d'Or. The French will discover it in theaters on September 10th.

Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi won the Palme d'Or at the 78th Cannes Film Festival on May 24th with A Simple Accident. After Three Faces in 2018, which won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes , the director made a winning return to the Croisette by picking up the Festival's top award. In a clever balance of tragic, comic, and poetic tones, his latest film poses almost metaphysical questions. Jafar Panahi dedicated the Cannes screening of his film to "all Iranian artists who had to leave Iran."

In the feature film, shot clandestinely in Tehran, the director recounts the martyrdom of Iranian prisoners through an epic journey in a van. Inside this van is a man whom Vahid, a worker once arrested simply for demanding his wages, recognized as his torturer, by the slight creak of his prosthetic leg. The man tortured, humiliated, and raped.

In the van, with Vahid, a bride-to-be, in her dress, her husband, their photographer, and another man, all former prisoners who had to endure the violence of the man they called "The Leg." They all recognized him, but they are waiting for his confession.

This quest for the truth takes a bizarre turn, and the Iranian director uses a touch of irony to capture the failings of Iranian society, particularly corruption, which he denounces with some delicious running gags.

The man locked in the trunk of the van has a little girl and a wife about to give birth. It was following a simple car accident with his family that he was recognized by Vahid. What will the victims decide to repair the past? How not to give in to hatred, how not to be "like them" ? How to remain human? This is the question posed by this film, which touches on the universal, and which earned such a wonderful Palme d'Or.

Jafar Panahi knows how to combine beauty, humor, and poetry to express human tragedies with all the power of the seventh art. Art as an act of resistance takes on its full meaning with his profoundly humanist cinema. A Simple Accident is expected in French theaters on September 10, 2025.

Gender : Drama Director: Jafar Panahi Original title "Yek Tasadef Sadeh" Starring: Vahid Mobasheri, Maria Afshari, Ebrahim Azizi Country: France, Luxembourg, Iran Duration: 1h41 Exit: September 10, 2025 Distributor: Memento Synopsis : After a simple accident, events unfold...