With the Academy Awards just a month away, Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whose latest film “It Was Just an Accident” is nominated for Best International Feature, journeyed north on Chrystie Street in search of a new pair of sunglasses. Dressed in an emerald overcoat, a flecked wool blazer, and jeans, he exuded a somber elegance as he chain-smoked; a sweep of white hair framed each ear. Despite the narrowness of the sidewalk, passersby instinctively afforded him a respectful distance.
Panahi had been away from Tehran for over two hundred days. During this period, following the U.S. air strike last June, state forces had brutally suppressed protests, resulting in thousands of deaths. Due to the rebellious themes of “It Was Just an Accident”—a film remarkably shot almost entirely in secret—Panahi himself had been handed a one-year prison sentence. He remarked, “Iranians are rejecting all the moral and ethical indoctrinations of the regime. This includes subverting rules around the hijab, profanities, even mourning traditions. They are saying, We don’t want this government.”
His harrowing experience in the notorious Evin prison, a facility for dissidents and political prisoners, served as the inspiration for “It Was Just an Accident.” The film’s narrative centers on Vahid, a character scarred by brutal prison beatings, who abducts a man he suspects of being his torturer. As Vahid drives through Tehran with the drugged captive in the back of a van, he seeks out other former prisoners to verify the man’s identity and to help him decide whether to commit murder. (Along the way, suspicious onlookers, sensing trouble, frequently demand bribes; at one point, when Vahid claims to have no cash, two guards present him with a credit-card reader.)
Panahi paused, observing a corner store adorned with Lunar New Year decorations. A small child, clutching a shimmering stuffed pony, trotted by. He reminisced about raising his own daughter. “She had this idea of us building a mini pool in the middle of our apartment and putting in a baby crocodile,” he recounted. “I told her, ‘You’re too young for that.’ ” She then requested an iguana, to which her parents eventually agreed. Panahi gestured, mimicking holding a reptile the size of a kitten. “She would take it anywhere she went. The iguana once got loose at a café, and it was total mayhem,” he recalled, adding, “Women were screaming.”
In 2010, Panahi was arrested while filming without the necessary permit from state censors. “Back then, the underground cinema scene hadn’t come about yet, and we really didn’t know what security measures we needed to take,” he explained. Officers apprehended everyone present, including his wife and daughter. While his family was released, Panahi remained incarcerated for months. He was eventually given a sentence prohibiting him from making films and from leaving the country for two decades. “One day at court, the judge asked me, ‘How is your daughter?’ And he said it with a really bad tone of voice. And when I returned to Tehran I decided that moment to send her out of the country,” he said. “I didn’t see her again for ten years.” Her iguana, which by then had grown to over five feet in length, remained behind.
Panahi eventually arrived at East Ninth Street and entered Fabulous Fanny’s, a vintage-eyewear boutique brimming with carousels of unworn frames. He pulled out his phone, showing an employee a photo of himself wearing a pair of glasses with thick black hexagonal frames. “I’m looking for something like this,” he stated. The employee searched, but without success. “I’ll just go shopping in Europe with my daughter,” he said, undeterred.