Vahid once endured the machinery of a regime that left marks no time could erase. A seemingly insignificant incident in the present opens a door to what was never truly over.

Consumed by the memories of torture in prison, it is precisely a squeaking sound that will sooner or later bring Vahid release. The squeak of his tormentor’s prosthesis. The sound that confronts him with a choice: to become part of the problem or to allow mercy.

In It Was Just an Accident by Jafar Panahi, the question is one of morality. Can an individual confront the inhumanity of a totalitarian regime with the same rigidity, or is the preservation of (shared) humanity perhaps the stronger response?

Born from a simple accident, a story unfolds that is initially defined by anger. An inward-consuming anger that offers its bearer only a brief sense of comfort. A feeling one can escape into, one that understands, that always stays on the same side. Until that anger crosses from the psychological into the physical, risking the complete destruction of lives built with care. An anger that turns into revenge.