Tortilla Heaven (2008)

Iranian director Jafar Panahi’s new film, It Was Just an Accident, won the prestigious Palme d’Or in 2025, and the film is worthy of every praise. The brilliance of the film might be easy to be overshadowed by its rebellious and courageous background. Jafar Panahi was imprisoned and banned from filmmaking by charges of “propaganda against the government” by the Islamic Republic of Iran in 2010. Continually making award-winning cinematic projects secretly, he was released after another arrest in 2023, followed by his hunger strike in the prison. After attending the Oscar for his nominated new film, which was also shot illegally, he planned to return to Iran to receive a one-year sentence in Iran. Iranian political and human rights activist Mehdi Mahmoudian, who co-wrote this film with Jafar Panahi, was arrested in Tehran for co-signing a letter against the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and was released on February 17. Shortly after, Iran was under airstrike by the U.S. and Israel, and Khamenei was killed on the first day. The war, without a goal or a strategy, is widening in Tehran and the whole Gulf area.

The film develops in strict chronological order in the span of one day and two nights, with a surprising turn right after the beginning. A family (a man with his pregnant wife and young daughter) drove through at night and bumped into a dog, which was killed, causing the car to halt and be damaged. The man comforted the young daughter that he wasn’t the one to blame for its death but its own fate and action, stating the title of the film—“It was just an accident.” Its chilling resonance was only revealed later in the film. When they stopped by a shop, the main character shifted to car mechanic Vahid. He followed them and waited until the next morning and hit the father with a shovel, taking him to a desert to bury him. The motive behind it was in the dialogue between the man and Vahid: Vahid was unfairly jailed while fighting for his rights and severely tortured by a man named Eghbal while being blindfolded, which made the identification of him difficult. This experience cost Vhaid’s career and family and left him with chronic pain in his back. Vahid was persuaded by the man’s denial and adjusted his impulsive plan.