IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT**

Famed Iranian director Jafar Panahi's IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT works better as political discourse than as a film. What I mean by this is that it poses interesting questions about political trauma and culpability. But the high-concept set-up is just too outlandish and absurd, and the characters too much like ciphers, for us to be emotionally engaged by the content.

The film opens in contemporary Iran. Husband, heavily pregnant wife and child are in a car bickering, when the husband runs over something, and needs to pull into a garage. The schlubby middle-aged attendant, called Vahid, recognises the husband as a prison guard who tortured him and makes the absurd snap decision to abduct him.  The problem is that Vahid isn't actually sure that this was the guard, as he is relying on aural rather than visual memory. So he drives his captive around in a white van, drawing in a group of fellow ex-prisoners to try and identify the man and adjudicate his fate. They are more or less ordinary middle-class people, far out of their depth in this brutal situation.  

I think Panahi wants to show us how ordinary people are coerced and made complicit in autocratic regimes and lose their moral compass.  And the movie has its moments of dark comedy as well as a haunting and truly tragic ending, no matter how you interpret it. But it somehow didn't cohere for me. It was a film I more admired than enjoyed.

IT WAS JUST AN ACCIDENT has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated PG-13.  It played Cannes 2025 where it won the Palme D'Or, and London 2025. It was released in the USA last October and in the UK last December.

TAXI TEHRAN - BFI London Film Festival 2015 - Day 2

You can listen to a podcast review of this film here or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.

TAXI TEHRAN is that rare thing - a movie that both makes you laugh out loud and makes you so angry at injustice you could scream. It’s directed by and stars the oppressed Iranian director Jafar Panahi - for years harassed and interrogated by the Iranian authorities, at some point banned from making films, and even if that ban were lifted, still subject to draconian censorship. But you can’t stop a film-maker creating art - even if, as in THIS IS NOT A FILM, Panahi is filmed showing how he is prevented from doing just that. And in his latest film, TAXI TEHRAN he takes an even more imaginative response to his predicament. In a spin of fellow Iranian film-maker Abbas Kiarostami’s 10, Panahi shows himself as a taxi driver driving around Tehran one day. He plays himself and it’s unclear how far his fares know or don’t know who he is - how far the action is staged or not. Panahi plays with the fourth wall, but there’s a kind of slow slide from hilarious mad-cap staged adventures into the deeply political and real.

OFFSIDE - gentle but effective Iranian comedy

OFFSIDE is a small but beautifully formed gentle comedy from Iran. The movie focuses on the day when Iran beat Bahrain in Teheran, thus qualifying for the 2006 World Cup. The bite to the comedy comes from the fact that the movie follows a handful of young female fans. The problem is that in Iran in it is forbidden for women to go to football matches. With all that swearing and all those men, it just wouldn't be seemly! The great thing about the movie is that it never descends into polemic, despite the obvious injustice of the rule and the massive stakes. One girl - a repeat offender who has the balls to impersonate an Irani solider and sit in the VIP area - risks imprisonment. She jokes that if she had worn an officer's uniform she would have been executed. We are not entirely sure if she is joking. The other great thing about the movie is that it does not demonise men. Random guys who twig to the girls' plans try to help them out. Even the soldiers who sequester them seem more concerned with their safety than oppressive. One provides a ham-fisted commentary for them. I left the theatre with a warm feeling, a renewed sense of how lucky I was to be able to watch as much footie as I liked, and a profound admiration for director, Jafar Panahi. What an outstanding decision to argue his case simply by showing the absurdity of the Iranian set-up. I strongly recommend this film.

OFFSIDE showed at Berlin 2006 where it won the Grand Jury Prize and is on release in Austria and the UK. It hits Germany on June 29th 2006 and France on December 6th 2006.