Jafar Panahi's Palme D'Or Victory Marks a Memorable Cannes Film Festival

For an Iranian director who’s received so much duress from his home government, Jafar Panahi has maintained a remarkable ability to continue working, almost as if his soul depended on it. His mere presence in festival competition line-ups always seems to augur a major prize; indeed, before his deserved Palme d’Or last month for It Was Just an Accident, he’d already won the top awards in Venice, Berlin and Locarno. This level of achievement can bring about cynicism and backlash from critics, but it feels justified for a body of work which has endured a tougher journey to just exist compared to almost any other film.

Panahi’s first film since his 2010 imprisonment to be made with more conventional production value, and not to feature him in a primary role on-screen, It Was Just an Accident targets present-day Iran’s corruption in the form of a tragicomic thriller, building tension through its characters’ uncertain decisions and ending in a confrontation filmed in one cathartic, unbroken take. A car mechanic on the outskirts of Tehran believes he recognises his former torturer when he was in prison, whose violent acts also led to his wife’s death; letting his passion and anger overtake him, he kidnaps the man in an act of vigilantism, and seeks reinforcements from more of his former victims, now of course released. The film compels on a simpler level as an investigation of the limits of revenge, but also perfectly crystallises the Iranian populace’s anger towards the Morality Police, and the country’s restrictions on civil liberties.

Elsewhere, the competition jury made responsible choices. Joachim Trier’s Sentimental Value and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s The Secret Agent were the other films predicted as realistic Palme contenders, and their final placements attested to this, with the former taking the runner-up Grand Prix, and the latter winning the Best Director award alongside a Best Actor gong for Wagner Moura. Both titles have great potential going forward when they’re released in cinemas, as well as in the all-important US award season.

The Jury Prize often goes to the competition’s more idiosyncratic offerings - perhaps films that saw passionate advocacy, but couldn’t impress the whole jury. Oliver Laxe’s Sirât blew many in the press corps away on the festival’s first Thursday, and feels especially fulfilling for those who’ve followed the Galician director’s career from the inception, watching him make something with genuine popular appeal, without forgetting his more experimental roots. I unfortunately missed Mascha Schilinski’s Sound of Falling, which enjoyed some spectacular critical write-ups, together with skepticism towards its narrative strategies and misrerabilist tone.

The festival received so many strong submissions that it could afford to snub numerous big competition contenders, with Venice and even next year’s Berlin on call to pick up the rejected films. With the Quinzaine in particular having changed its programming ethos to privilege less commercial films, as well as more idiosyncratic genre choices, the sidebars suffered a little in comparison to the competition. Still, I can strongly recommend A Poet, the runner-up in Un Certain Regard, a grungy Colombian comedy in Un Certain Regard about a literary lowlife, and Yes, an articulate temperature check on post-October 7 Israel from Nadav Lapid, which the Quinzaine were lucky to have after the Official Selection passed on it. So, discoveries will continue at festivals around the world, big and small, and the bar is set high for Cannes 2026.