Telluride Silver Medallion and Tribute to Iranian Filmmaker Jafar Panahi, Reflecting on ‘It Was Just an Accident’ and Lifelong Political Filmography
The Sheridan Opera House in Telluride, Colorado has seen legendary, subversive non-American filmmakers celebrated by the Telluride Film Festival over the past 52 years. From Werner Herzog, to Agnès Varda, to Andrezj Wajda, to Pedro Almodóvar, some of the world’s most renowned film creators have taken the stage to be awarded the Silver Medallion by the prestigious film festival.
This weekend, the celebrated Iranian director Jafar Panahi joined this pantheon fresh off the heels of his second Palme d’Or winner, and together with his astounding new film It Was Just An Accident.
Setting the Stage for Panahi’s Acceptance Interview – A Retrospective
A full house packed the cozy Sheridan at the heart of town, when a rowdy intro led to a short montage of the filmmakers’ most celebrated films. These included 1995’s The White Balloon, his feature debut and first big winner at Cannes, a touching movie about a girl determined to find the 500 bank note she needed to buy a goldfish. It also included the Oscar shortlisted documentary This Is Not a Film, where he recounts his political arrest in Iran the prior year and digs deeper into his exploration of modern Iranian society—and his unabashed decrying of its current regime. It ended with 2015’s Taxi another documentary-styled film that featured Panahi driving a cab around Teheran and, against most importantly, directly and incisively decrying the injustices of the current regime.
Panahi Discusses His Approach to Film and His Views on Politics
But the real showstopper was Panahi’s acceptance of the medallion and his frank, extended conversation about filmmaking, his life, Iran, politicians, oppressive regimes—and how his wife tells him he is useless around the home, for being unable to find basic household items like butter.
As for his filmmaking style, Panahi enraptured the audience by describing himself and his crew in the service of actors. He places them squarely in control of films, he explained, perhaps even of the script if necessary. From his perspective, if the acting is not good, then it is the director’s fault. Surprisingly, given his view that actors are meant to be in control, he also explained that he prefers to select non-actors for key roles, if possible.
Discussing the style and tone of his movies, Panahi was explicit that he does not mean to infuse comedy into any of the moments that most international audiences view as absurd and even hilarious within his work. Instead, he said, the Iranian people are suffused with that sort of vivacious energy. Spend a few minutes walking the streets of Teheran, he explained, and soon you will be enthralled in conversation, laughing. Further, he ventured, this is why the regime wants to oppress people. To make them sad. To take away their humanity.
When it came to politics, and as his daring filmography would suggest, Panahi is no stranger to legal troubles for his work—including at home but also at times with the governing regime in the United States. He was unabashed in describing his perspective of how such governments oppress and ultimately ruin people—not just physically, in prison, but emotionally, mentally, and forever. His denouncement of autocracy came with a refreshingly realistic perspective that people are inherently neither good nor bad, and could be driven to either type of action given the right situation. Naturally, his progressive views are catnip for the very clearly liberal-leaning Telluride audiences, who clapped profusely at the various daring moments decrying the regimes of his home and adopted countries.
The question he posed—both in the tribute and in the movie itself—is what we would do when those we do not agree with were no longer in power. Would we act like them? Or would we find another way? Which leads into the other feature event of the night, the film itself.
‘It Was Just An Accident’ Review: A Stupendous, Hopeful Take on Our Collective Human Future
The other main attraction of the night was Panahi’s second Palme d’Or winner, a movie that is set in an Iranian near future where the regime has faded and people are attempting a return to normalcy. But late in the night, a man traveling home with his family sees his car breakdown. He enters the nearest repair shop for help, where an attendant, Vahid, recognizes his voice. Vahid later follows the man home and, soon thereafter, violently assaults and kidnaps him. Vahid is convinced that the man is Egbal, or “the Peg Leg” man—a police investigator who brutally tortured him and others in the not-to-distant past.
But Vahid is not entirely sure that he has the right man. He travels the bustling city, collecting a group of misfit people—a photographer, a bride on the eve of her wedding, an unhinged street bum—to help him confirm the identity of his prey, determined to exact revenge if he is truly his torturer.
The tense, absurd, and remarkably real 100-or-so minutes that follow are without question one of this year’s best—and most important—films. These characters suffered unspeakable, unfair, inhumane brutalities at the hands of that person, whoever he is. The kidnapped man, meanwhile, has a family of his own—a pregnant wife, a loving daughter—again, all independent of whether he is or is not the torturer, a question that the film ambulates with through the final moments.
The various characters have different perspectives on what is to be done. Through them, Panahi explores tried but true philosophies of righteousness and morality. None of it is particularly new or even that insightful, but it is so timely in 2025, and told in such a different manner, that it is stunningly effective. Both sides present great arguments. ‘Do not become like them or sink to their level’ is the best argument for the ‘let him live’ camp. ‘If you let him go, he will come after you,’ is the best retort for those who wish to bury the man. A series of slightly absurd situations unfold that take these characters, crammed into the back of Vahid’s van, through a personal and philosophical examination of these difficult questions, packed with the harrowing emotions that reliving their past suffering brings.
The central conceit of Panahi’s entire work—that the torture stays with you for life, and that the prison can be larger on its outside—is tragically ever present in ‘It Was Just an Accident,’ despite the film’s overall slightly hopeful vision for a future in which we can even ask the question of how to move on from present horrors.
It is remarkable that a man who has endured this sort of persecution can endure. This is perhaps one of the reasons why audiences admire him—the inherent quality and provocative nature of his work being the other obvious one.
But the Telluride Film Festival interviewer was not kidding when he noted that for the last three days a smiling Iranian man had walked down the streets of town, sharing his glow on others. While Panahi joked, in response, that the only reason he was outside was to have a smoke, he was being overly modest. As I typed the last words of this piece, he coincidentally walked right by me on Main Street. I caught his gaze—he was smiling, but not smoking—and returned the smile.
The thumbs up sign I got in response was almost an antidote to the last few, stunning, and even harrowing moments of his latest movie. A fitting coda to a deserving tribute.
Grade: A
It Was Just an Accident premiered at Cannes, where it won the Palme D’Or. NEON will distribute it in the U.S.
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