The Iranian film It Was Just an Accident enters Oscar season with the wind at its back, having won the top prize it can.

It's also racked up a raft of awards from other film festivals and has landed on a lot of critics' top ten lists for 2025.

The movie bears out those accolades.

It's a tense, volatile and often darkly funny film

about the thirst for vengeance and the possibility or impossibility of forgiveness.

It's about a former political prisoner who runs into a man

he's almost convinced is the one who tortured him and other prisoners.

Again, that's almost convinced,

which is why he kidnaps the man and drives him around to Ron,

hoping that one of his fellow former prisoners will be able to definitively ID him.

I'm Aisha Harris.

And I'm Glenn Weldon, and today we're talking about It Was Just an Accident on Pop Culture Happy Hour from NPR.

Joining us today is Vulture TV critic Roxanna Haddadi. Hey, Roxanna.

Hello. Thank you for having me.

Of course. It was just an accident stars Vahid Mobaseri, as Vahid, a mechanic who runs into a man he thinks is his former torturer from his time locked up in an Iranian prison.

He kidnaps the man and sets out to kill him, but the man, played by Ibrahim Azizi, insists he's not the

man Vahid thinks he is. And he talks such a good game that Vaheed packs him inside his van and

drives around Tehran to show him to other one-time political prisoners, hoping one of them

can remove all doubt.

The director, Jafar Panehi, has repeatedly been arrested and imprisoned in Iran for speaking out against the regime.

His films are banned in the country, and the film was shot in secret.

As we tape this, he's been sentenced again on propaganda charges, his legal team plans to appeal the ruling.

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