By now, we have become so used to seeing Jafar Panahi being the protagonist in his own films that it feels odd when he does not appear in It Was Just an Accident, being screened in the World Cinema category at the 30th International Film Festival of Kerala. But one can feel the man’s presence in the sheer anger that pours out of each of the four characters who are raring to have a go at a man who tormented them in the past.
It is no ordinary man whom they have held in captivity. The man stands for the all powerful State which has clamped down on their freedoms. Yet, they are unsure if he is really the person behind all their troubles. The film begins rather innocuously, with Eghbal and his family riding home at night. The ride is mostly joyful, except for an incident involving a dog, which his pregnant wife brushes off as ‘It was just an accident’.
Later, the car develops a snag, forcing them to stop at a workshop, where Vahid, the mechanic, recognises a familiar, eerie sound, created by Eghbal’s dragging prosthetic leg. Those sonic waves bring back the painful memories of the torture that Vahid, as an alleged political dissident, underwent in prison at the hands of a man nick-named ‘Peg Leg’. Hot-headed, probably from the harsh experiences he has undergone in life, Vahid tracks him down the next day and hauls him over to a desert, to be buried alive. But then, Eghbal claims he has thoroughly mistaken him for someone else.
