Neon Buys Jafar Panahi’s Cannes Competition Film ‘It Was Just An Accident’

EXCLUSIVE: We can verify that Neon has picked up North American rights to Jafar Panahi’s well-received characteristic It Was Just an Accident, which had its international premiere in Competition on the Cannes Film Festival previous this week.

It Was Just an Accident has a one-line synopsis that reads: “What begins as a minor accident sets in motion a series of escalating consequences.” The movie, which has been some of the best-reviewed films on the pageant, offers in a fictional manner with previous wrongfully incarcerated working-class folks searching for revenge towards the guard who tortured and berated them. In his assessment, Deadline’s Pete Hammond referred to as the film “a powerful statement for humanity” that “serves as a warning that you better watch your back.” 

The Wednesday afternoon screening was once met with a 10-minute ovation — and was once extremely vital as a result of Panahi himself was once in attendance, marking the primary time he has been in a position to look on the pageant in over 20 years.

Panahi, whose credit additionally come with The White Balloon, The Circle and Taxi, has spent maximum of his filmmaking profession within the crosshairs of Iran’s authoritarian Islamic Republic govt, together with greater than a decade going through a couple of detentions, jail sentences, area arrests and filmmaking and go back and forth bans.

He was once launched from his newest prison stint in February 2023, and within the manufacturing notes for It Was Just an Accident, he says: “The sentence that banned me from making films, writing, giving interviews and traveling has been officially annulled. But in practice, I remain on the margins. … I have no choice but to keep working outside the system.”

The filmmaker hired clandestine how to shoot It Was Just an Accident and mentioned that prior to wrapping, “plainclothes officers turned up and demanded all the footage. I refused. They continued to put pressure on us by threatening to arrest the crew and shut down production. In the end, they gave up. We paused the shoot for a while, then resumed. Nothing further happened.” 

Neon has a usually stacked Cannes lineup now, with different Palme d’Or contenders together with A Sentimental Value and The Secret Agent.

Panahi’s first characteristic, The White Balloon (1995), was once decided on for Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes, the place it received the Caméra d’Or. He returned to th Croisette with 2003’s Crimson Gold, which performed in Un Certain Regard and received the Jury Prize. Initially decided on to constitute Iran on the Oscars, Crimson Gold in the long run was once banned through the government, fighting it from being proven in Iranian cinemas.