Almost as soon as Iranian dissident director Jafar Panahi scooped the Palme d’Or, the questions began to swirl: Would his lauded film, It Was Just an Accident, a surreal comedy inspired by his own imprisonment for so-called “propaganda against the system,” follow Parasite and Anora in taking the best-picture statuette, too?
The answer is complicated. It Was Just an Accident is a highly worthy Cannes winner, and one which, as jury president Juliette Binoche put it, “springs from a feeling of resistance [and] survival, which is absolutely necessary today.” But it is also incredibly intimate—an ensemble chamber piece of sorts—which, at least to me, doesn’t feel like a best-picture winner, per se, though it very much deserves to be among the 10 nominees.
Having said that, Panahi—an industry mainstay who is widely beloved and has a very moving personal story and track record of making films against seemingly impossible odds—could easily end up on the best-director shortlist, which has become much more international of late, and his razor-sharp and very funny script should get an original-screenplay nod, too.
The award it could feasibly win, though, is best international feature, but that could prove tricky. Iran, the film’s country of origin, won’t select it as its Oscar submission, given it was made without the government’s permission. The film was co-produced by France and Luxembourg, and while the former seems unlikely to choose It Was Just an Accident over a French-language release as its Oscar submission, might the latter? If it does, the situation would resemble the one involving The Seed of the Sacred Fig at last year’s Oscars, a film made by Panahi’s friend and fellow Iranian dissident Mohammad Rasoulof, which was submitted to the Academy by Germany, a co-producer and the country to which Rasoulof has fled. It successfully landed a nomination—so watch this space.